The Box is a major cultural and heritage attraction and archive, which opened in Plymouth’s city centre in September 2020. Its collection, formally the South West Film and Television Archive (SWFTA), is the regional film archive for the South West of England, comprising the combined programme libraries of Westward Television and Television South West (TSW). It also includes a significant number of donated film collections dating back to the early 1890s.
This film is part of Free
The Tamar Bridge
The new Tamar suspension bridge reaches new heights in civil engineering.
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Overview
In the 1950s local and national authorities agreed to funding a new road bridge for the A38 to span the River Tamar from Plymouth in Devon to the suburb of Wearde at Saltash in Cornwall. The site by Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Royal Albert Railway Bridge was chosen and a decision to part-fund the project through tolls was taken. Civil Engineer Consultants Mott Hay and Anderson designed what was to be the first significant post-war suspension bridge and the longest ever in the UK.
The bridge main span between the towers is three hundred and thirty-five metres and the whole structure is six hundred and forty-two metres long. Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Company built the bridge in just over two years at a cost of one and a half million pounds. A toll-free foot and cycle path was added when the bridge was widened and strengthened in 2002 and the bridge became the first to use cantilevers on a suspension bridge winning an award for civil engineering. The bridge was officially opened by Elizabeth, the Queen Mother on 26 April 1962.
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