Workers hoping weather conditions allow for bridge work

The weather and rules to protect salmon found in the River Ribble will bring the work to a halt

Engineers working on demolishing a 220-year-old tram bridge are hoping weather conditions will allow staff to remain in the river until early November.

Preston's tram bridge which connects the city's Avenham Park to Penwortham in South Ribble was closed in February 2019 over fears it could collapse.

Although the structure itself was removed in two weeks last month, work to remove remnants of the rubble on the banks of the Ribble continues before the construction of a new bridge.

Antony Mulligan, of Eric Wright Civil Engineering which is leading the work, is cautiously confident the replacement bridge will open in December 2025.

Engineers hope construction of the new bridge will be complete by December 2025

Engineers are set to install the first of two in-river piers before contractors have to vacate the river channel ahead of winter.

Work in the water will be brought to a stop first by the weather and then by rules to protect the salmon found in Ribble until next June.

The site will not completely shut down once the weather does finally turn with work likely to continue to install a land pier on the southern bank of the Ribble.

When the project restarts in earnest, the first job will be to complete the second pier in the river itself.

Further work will also be carried out on the huge compound that has been built on the South Ribble side to accommodate the crane needed to put the new bridge in place – which will occupy an area about the size of two football pitches.

Mr Mulligan said that was scheduled for autumn or winter time next year.

An extra £1.6m has been added to its original £6.6m budget since work on the Old Tram Bridge project began in May.

The additional cash has come from the pot originally earmarked for the now scrapped plans to create new football facilities on Preston's Ashton Park.

The bridge started out carrying packhorse trams between the Leeds-Liverpool Canal at Walton Summit and the Lancaster Canal in Preston.

The abutments, or supports, standing at either end of the bridge are believed to date back to its original 1804 construction and will remain as a link to the history of the site.

"We're going to refurbish them and re-use them," Chris Wilding, Lancashire County Council's bridges and structures design manager, said.

"They're a great historical feature that we wouldn't want to disappear or affect."