ABSTRACT
When Thomas Tredgold was born in 1788, the Iron Bridge at Coalbrookdale was nine years old and the first hesitant steps in the new era of cast iron as a structural material had been taken. The place of timber as the most versatile structural material was threatened. When Tredgold began his apprenticeship as a carpenter (1802), Bage had completed the first multi-storey iron frame building, and by the time the apprenticeship was complete Telford and Jessop had built Pont Cysyllte Aqueduct.Whilst Tredgold was working in Scotland as a carpenter (1808-13), Wilson, Rennie and Telford established cast iron as the major bridge material. During the first five years of his work in London (1813-18) Tredgold doubtless watched the new bridges being built over the Thames at Vauxhall and Southwark, and heard of Telford's design for the suspension bridge over the Menai Straits.
