Goole Swing Bridge
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Hook Road, Goole, DN14 5
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Visit websiteGoole grew as a coal exporting port being at the point where the Aire & Calder Canal joins the river Ouse. This flows into the Humber a short distance eastward. It was served by three railway companies, the North Eastern, the Great Central and the Lancashire & Yorkshire. At the peak a million tons of coal a year were moved through the port.
Two miles to the east of the town the railway crosses the River Ouse by a swing bridge, probably the finest of its type in the British Isles, and when it opened in 1869 the second largest of its type in the world.
Five of the its six spans are fixed and the sixth pivots on a 15 m. (50ft) diameter pier, originally hydraulically driven. The six sets of three hogback wrought iron plate girder spans are supported on cast iron cylindrical piers. The fixed spans are 35 m. (116ft) long. The swing span provides a navigation opening of 30 m. (100ft).
In Goole Docks a wagon hoist has been preserved as a testimony to the once big coal trade. Built in 1869 for the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway it lifted wagons for tipping coal into ships alongside. Five stages high it tipped the wagons endways and poured the contents down a chute which could be adjusted for tide level to minimise potential damage to coal lumps.
By boat or road: Best seen from the water, but approachable from Hook Road, on the north eastern outskirts of Goole.
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