File:Lennox Bridge (2589173762).jpg

Notes: Lennox Bridge

On Sunday 28 July 1833, Governor Burke and his retinue wound their way up the new pass at Emu, en route to the Pilgrim Inn. They paused in their journey on the small, single-arch stone bridge that took the road across a deep gully midway up the pass. Here the Governor remarked upon the “rural splendour” of the spot and the way the simplicity of the bridge's design, with its gently sweeping curve, blended harmoniously with the surrounding landscape.

Asked, in 1831, to lay out plans for a town of Emu on the western side of the Nepean River, Major Thomas Mitchell insisted first on surveying and building the pass which now bears his name. The town could only be planned with confidence if the line of the Western Road in its ascent of Lapstone Hill was marked permanently.

A problem posed by the gully halfway up the proposed route presented an opportunity eagerly seized upon by Mitchell. Knowledge of bridge design and construction in Australia was negligible. Unstable wooden structures, easy and regular victims of flood and fire, predominated. To Mitchell's mind this was a situation to be deplored as the possession of well-designed bridges was one of the signs of a civilised society. “No country is thought anything of that does not possess them”, he told an audience at the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts many years later. At Lapstone he had a chance to experiment with the building of a substantial stone bridge, a bridge that would be the first of its kind on the mainland and the forerunner of others he would build to improve the system of Great Roads he was designing.

By a remarkably fortuitous set of circumstances Mitchell obtained the services of a master mason of twenty years experience who had worked on a number of major bridge projects in Britain. David Lennox arrived in Sydney in August 1832 just as the work on the new pass at Emu was beginning and, when Mitchell made his acquaintance, was working as a day labourer building the stone wall outside the Legislative Council Chambers in Macquarie Street.

From late 1832 until mid-1833 Lennox, appointed Superintendent of Bridges, worked on the bridge with convicts selected personally from the larger road gang. It seems that he maintained a good relationship with his group of about twenty convicts, and, in the words of Assistant Surveyor John Abbott, was “indefatigable in instructing them how to work”. The bridge on the pass at Emu, the first item on what was ultimately an impressive list of achievements by David Lennox, was completed in early July 1833.

Described by Mitchell as “a somewhat experimental work”, Lennox Bridge formed part of the main route to the west for almost one hundred years. It has borne traffic the like of which Mitchell and Lennox could never have had imagined and, during the 1950s particularly, it suffered severely from increasing use by fast modern cars and heavy vehicles. Damage was such that it was eventually closed to all traffic.

It was not until the late 1970s that a concerted effort at restoration was begun. The work was designed to maintain the shape and appearance of the original bridge while, at the same time, providing the structural strength necessary to accommodate modern traffic. Lennox Bridge was re-opened in December 1982, almost one hundred and fifty years after David Lennox and his convict work gang toiled there throughout the summer of 1832-3. © John Low 1987, "Historic Blue Mountains"

Format: postcard of hand coloured photograph

Licensing: Attribution, share alike, creative commons.

Repository: Blue Mountains City Library <a href="http://www.bmcc.nsw.gov.au/library/" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.bmcc.nsw.gov.au/library/</a>

Part of: Local Studies Collection