Cornwall project now due to finish later this summer, English Heritage says
English Heritage is insisting its £5m Tintagel footbridge scheme will be ready later this summer despite busting this month’s opening deadline.
The Cornwall bridge, which is being bankrolled by Tetra Pak packaging heir Hans Rausing, whose fortune was put at £9.6bn in the latest Sunday Times Rich List, was due to have opened this month.
But the scheme has been hit by delays with Georgia Butters, English Heritage head of historic properties Cornwall, telling Building: "The new footbridge at Tintagel Castle is a complex feat of engineering with multiple components requiring individual, specialist fabrication and this process takes time.”
The 70m-span bridge links the mainland with Tintagel Castle island and is being built by American Bridge UK with fabrication being carried out by Plymouth firm Underhill Engineering.
Work to lift the first of the dozen steel sections that make up the bridge into place began this week and Butters added: “We will quickly see the bridge take shape and will announce our summer opening date soon."
The bridge was designed by Belgian civil engineering firm Ney & Partners and William Matthews Associates, the six-year-old practice set up by the Shard architect who spent nearly two decades at the building' architect Renzo Piano, after winning an international competition for the job in 2015.
American Bridge UK referred Building to English Heritage's response.
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