Darras Road Bridge: The 1914 Way In

The original plan for the Darras Hall Estate drawn up in 1910 laid out the main roads and the routes in and out of the estate. These were limited to only five, as most of the estate was surrounded by farmland or cut off by the River Pont. The main access point was to the north and directly linked to the west end of the village centre. This was the end of Darras Road, the principal route through the estate and the connection with the village required the construction of a new bridge across the Pont.

The bridge was built in 1914 making it ten years older than its more celebrated companion, the main Ponteland Bridge.

It was designed out of concrete by the surveyors to the estate owners, a firm called Watson and Scott. It is a single span bridge with a footpath running underneath. The design of the parapet is almost identical to the main bridge in the village.

The owners of the estate put the bridge through an elaborate series of tests before they opened it to the public. Two giant steamrollers with a combined weight of over twenty tons, were driven over the bridge and then manoeuvred to stand on the apex of the bridge’s arch. Thankfully, the bridge past the test and is used by hundreds of motorists driving over it today.