Owdo me owd butties, thank’ee for once again poppin’ to have a brevit at me owd chunnerins, dunna werrit this’un is only a short un. (stop that cheerin’)
I’m sure we have all sin the owd iron bridge at Ironbridge many times but how many of us have sin the secret faces?
If you stand under the bridge and look up at the apex, on either side of the arches, the silhouette of a face can clearly be sin. Not only does this appear on both sides they are cleverly designed to look the same frum either end of the bridge.
So who’s face is it? Some folks say that it is the devil, owd Nick himself, who cast his image to watch over the gud folk of Madeley Wood.
Another theory is that it is Abraham Darby’s grandson, Abraham Darby III, who had the bridge built by his Coalbrookdale Company. The Darbys were Quakers and they saw personal portraiture as an expression of personal vanity. The owd river men, who lived and plied their trade on the banks of the Sivern (Severn) used to say that a foreman wurkin’ on the bridge came up with the design. At that time the craze for silhouette portraits was starting so mebbe vanity got the better of owd Ab Dab 3.
The less romantic amongst us ull tell you that it inna a face at all, just a quirk of design but i like to believe that Shrewsbury’s Thomas Farnolls Pritchard, who designed the bridge, knew that his health was failing and he ‘ouldna live to see his bridge completed so came up with a plan. If he couldna see his bridge he could at least make sure that everybody who saw it could see him, and craftily incorporated his own image into the design. Work on the bridge began in November 1777 and Thomas sadly died in December the same year.
So what do you think? I’d love to hear your views and if you happen to have the original design plans tucked away in a drawer let us know if the face gets a mention.
Well that’s enough chunnerin frum me, thank’ee most kindly to anyone who is still reading this, now run along and play nicely.
l
