Properly known as the Great Western Road bridge, this is a very undervalued piece of engineering in Glasgow, almost totally ignored by the passing road traffic. You really have to see it from below to appreciate the construction of this Victorian marvel.
Up until 1840, the River Kelvin marked the westernmost boundary of Glasgow, and anyone wanting to travel farther had to get their feet wet crossing the river at the ford below. In the early years of the 19th Century a consortium of local merchants constructed a low-level stone bridge of three arches to replace the ford. If you look over the south side of the present bridge towards the subway entrance, you can see a bit of vertical buttressing in the wall by the river, which marks the location of the old bridge. Unlike the present bridge, it extended at right-angles across the river and was barely wide enough to take a cart. The approach to the old bridge was down the cobbled lane that still leads from South Woodside Road, and more or less where the subway entrance is now was a cottage housing the tollbooth.
When legislation was passed allowing the construction of the Great Western Road turnpike, which was designed to be perfectly straight between St. George's X and Anniesland X, a new high-level river crossing had to be constructed above the old one to maintain that intended alignment; and so for many years the two bridges awkwardly co-existed, the lower zig-zagging under the high one. Both were replaced in 1890-91 by the present bridge, with its iron and steel construction by Sir William Arrol, who also built Tower Bridge in London and the Forth (rail) Bridge. An interesting piece of trivia here is that the riveted steel girders underpinning the roadway were surplus left over from the Forth Bridge.
Standing on the north side of the bridge looking down at the river, you can see the old weir that was once a dam used to provide water power for the many mills downstream of the bridge. This is also where the Hillhead ford used to be.
From the south side, you look over what is now the car park for the Subway's park-and-ride scheme and a park area that is part of the Kelvin Walkway, but at one time there were three mills in this area, drawing power from the river. Later, it became a coal and goods yard for the Caledonian Railway's Central Low Level line and the site of Kelvinbridge Station, whose platforms can still be discerned to the east as the pedestrian crossing over the river, past the low-level bar/cafe on the riverbank. From here the line led north-west by a tunnel under Great Western Road to Botanics, and southwards beyond Gibson Street it vanishes into another tunnel leading under Kelvingrove Park to Stobcross. Part of this tunnel has recently been re-used at Exhibition Centre station.
The magnificent Caledonian Mansions were contemporary with and named after the railway, and the station entrance and booking office used to be located in the little cobbled lane that connects the west end of the bridge to Otago Street.
At the east end of the bridge, the original staircase is still worth a walk down to appreciate the ornate balustrade. At the bottom on the left was the original entrance to the Subway, a rather small lift that used to descend to the platforms. Few people use these stairs now as the newer Subway escalator is more convenient, but they are worth a look.
More trivia - in the movie 'House of Mirth', these stairs and the bridge above were transformed, through the marvel of green-screen special effects, into a high-level train station in Victorian New York.
(Much of this information comes from Alex Matheson's book 'Glasgow's Other River', which is an impeccably-researched history of the Kelvin.) read more
