After campaigning by a local community pressure group, Friends of Tram Bridge, the City Council in Preston included the replacement of the old tram bridge in its Levelling up Funding bid in 2022. IWA member, Nigel Hardacre has helped the group by joining the committee and organising and leading several heritage walks around the closed bridge and the route of what was once the Lancaster Canal’s horse-drawn tram road (‘plate-way’), which ran from 1803 until its closure in 1862. It connected both ends of the Lancaster Canal and was only designed to be temporary until enough funds could be raised to build 5 miles of canal to connect both ends. The railway age quickly followed and the canal link was never built.
We will await the release of designs for the new bridge, having held a competition last year with designs proposed by schoolchildren in Preston and students at local colleges and universities.
