Orwell Bridge
bridge in Ipswich, Suffolk, England, UK, carries the A14 road across the River Orwell estuary
The Orwell Bridge is a concrete box girder bridge just south of Ipswich in Suffolk, England. Opened to road traffic in 1982, the bridge carries the A14 road (formerly the A45) over the River Orwell.
History
Design
The main span is 190 metres which, at the time of its construction, was the longest pre-stressed concrete span in use in the UK. The two spans adjacent to the main span are 106m, known as anchor spans. Most of the other spans are 59m. The total length is 1,287 metres from Wherstead to the site of the former Ipswich Airport. The width is 24 metres with an air draft of 43 metres; the bridge had to be at least 41 metres high. The approach roads were designed by CH Dobbie & Partners of Cardiff, later bought by Babtie, Shaw and Morton then Jacobs in 2004.
The bridge is constructed of a pair of continuous concrete box girders with expansion joints that allow for expansion and contraction. The girders are hollow, allowing for easier inspection, as well as providing access for services, including telecom, power, and a 711mm water main from the nearby Alton Water reservoir. The necessary inspections still cause major disruption to traffic every six years; during the inspection in the summer of 2005, the delays caused by lane closures and speed restrictions added between 30 and 60 minutes to journey times during the peak commuting periods.
“Orwell Bridge” enters the record as bridge in Ipswich, Suffolk, England, UK, carries the A14 road across the River Orwell estuary. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Orwell, Bridge and bridge can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Orwell Bridge” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Orwell, Bridge and bridge provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7105279. Authority coordinates are 52.027, 1.164. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1982, 2004 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Orwell Bridge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.