Reply To: Halfpenny Bridge

Well that’s great about the Sunday Times articles. They had last Sunday’s Sunday Times in my local Chinese take-away, which is pretty fast, so I only read the first part of the bridge article. One thing mentioned was that the bridge was unpopular around the end of the nineteenth century. The bridge everyone hates now is the loopline bridge. It is true that it would be better if it wasn’t there at all, it ruins views of the Customs House both from along the river and from Gardiner Street, but, given that it is there and there is no real way we can get rid of the DART bridge, shouldn’t we treat it better and learn to love it too. It would probably be quite fine cleaned and painted and uncluttered with ads. In his book Frank MacDonald advocates replacing it with something ligher, but I think we would be losing some interesting idustrial age masonry without really gaining a clear vista.