The World's Greatest Bridges

Channel 5

3:25 AM to 4:10 AM

Friday 4 October

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Opened in 1966, the mile-long Severn Bridge was the first road bridge to connect England and south Wales by spanning the Severn estuary, one of the most dangerous waterways in Britain. An ill-fated 19th-century railway crossing had previously existed over the Severn, but it was demolished in the late 1960s after a number of fatal accidents. Rob Bell explores the failures in engineering that led to the downfall of that earlier bridge and reveals how designer Dr Bill Brown took a radically new approach by developing an aerodynamic box girder deck that completely revolutionised bridge design