The Bridge of a Million Bricks

29 Jan, 2026

Whilst doing a fairly substantial walk in a remote part of the county, I ran into a couple walking their dog. The first time we crossed paths, we exchanged a polite greeting as walkers often do. The second time, I’d come around the apex of my walking loop and I think they were heading back to their no doubt very lovely big house nearby. This time, the gentleman of the couple stopped to chat (much to the annoyance of his wife I suspect). He asked if I walked a lot in the county and if I knew about the ‘bridge of a million bricks’. Now you can’t tell me about a place with a name like that and expect me to leave it alone.

So back home and I undertook a few days of research. First off, it's not really a bridge at all, it's an aqueduct, originally for the Leominster canal to pass over the river Rea. Until 2013 it could have been used as a footpath and is/was marked on the OS map as such, but this seems to be no longer possible due to a partial collapse in 2013. When I visited, it was blocked poorly and there was a temptation to cross, but it's a seriously remote part of Worcestershire and I doubt help would be quickly forthcoming if it collapsed with you on top of it! Getting to it at all involved a fairly substantial planning session to figure out where to leave the car, how to get across and along the busy A456 and a very decent walk along some very overgrown footpaths.

The Leominster Canal itself was a fairly unsuccessful attempt to build a canal connecting Hereford to Stourport and thus to the River Severn and to the expanding canal network, including the Worcester and Staffordshire canal which I’ve kayaked and which stretches from the coal fields of the Black Country ¹ to the Stourport basin. It was seen as a transport for coal and goods from Herefordshire and Worcestershire to reach the wider world. Construction was started in 1791. The initial section ran from Marlbrook, near Mamble in Worcestershire, to Woofferton in Shropshire (south of Ludlow). This primarily was used to take coal from the Mamble coal fields out towards Tenbury Wells and then Woofferton. Opening on 20th October 1794 it is this section that contains the ‘bridge of a million bricks’ Aqueduct over the River Rea between Mamble and Newnham Bridge.

It was built, as its colloquial name suggests, of brick with a span of around 13 metres making it the largest single brick span aqueduct in the country at that time but not especially large by modern construction standards.

It was, however, very poorly constructed and soon after opening had to be strengthened with timber and iron bars. The canal did have some expansion but never got joined to the wider canal network and eventually closed. The crappy construction was a feature across the Leominster canal with various tunnels collapsing and the other aqueduct over the Teme river being partially blown up as target practise in WWII, perhaps that will be a visit on a future date. Overall one of the less known and less successful infrastructure projects of the Industrial revolution that’s left signs on the landscape of Herefordshire and Worcestershire