The Hairpin Bridge

The bridge in 1896
from John Smith
Peninsula Road
from John Smith
Peninsula Road in the 1960s
from John Smith
The entrance to (or exit from) the bridge
from John Smith
The Dwellings from the air
from John Smith
The footbridge today
from John Smith
The bridge to Riverside today
from John Smith
Another view of the bridge, today
From John Smith
The Dwellings and the Hairpin Bridge
from John Smith

The old hairpin bridge stood close to the Tilbury Dwellings, and the houses of Peninsula Road and Orient Road.

The bridge crossed the Tilbury railway lines from the Riverside and to London. it was very popular with traffic and pedestrians up to the 1980s and was built in the 1860s. In the 1980s it was considered to be unsafe for traffic as its metal structure became weak, and was only used by pedestrians as the road part was closed.

It later gave way to a pedestrian bridge only, which we have now today.

Here we have a early photo of the bridge with some kind of carnival going on.

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  • Walked over that hairpin bridge many a time with my mum. I remember a paper doing a spoof article on it claiming it was built from reclaimed hairpins donated by the women of Tilbury as a war effort. My dad actually thought it was true until he came to the bit where the bridge was originally built straight and changed when the pins reverted to their original shape

    By Margaret Nyrvana-Jones (24/03/2022)
  • Mr. Paul Johnson I think time must have played tricks with your memory, it was my mother that was killed as a result of the articulated lorry, loaded with tea, that overturned at the top or the Hairpin bridge on Tuesday August 4th 1959.

    Percy Dalton

    By Percy Dalton (27/10/2014)
  • I always have good memiors of all the tilbury kids playing on the swing under the bridge and you had to get there early otherwise there was a queue up l was ok because I only lived in perth house

    By darrell turner (05/05/2014)
  • My main memory of the hairpin bridge relates to an accident during the late 1950s when the mother of a very good friend of mine at the time (Johnny Nicholson) was killed when a number of tea chests fell from a lorry negotiating the hairpin bend and crushed her. The Nicholsons lived on the corner of Gainsborough Avenue and St Chad’s Road at the time. 

    By Paul Johnson (11/12/2013)

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