The Severn Bridge (Welsh: Pont Hafren) is a motorway suspension bridge spanning the River Severn and River Wye between Aust, South Gloucestershire (just north of Bristol) in England, and Chepstow, Monmouthshire in South Wales, via Beachley, Gloucestershire, a peninsula between the two rivers. It is the original Severn road crossing between England and Wales and took five years to construct at a cost of £8 million. It replaced the Aust ferry.
The bridge was opened on 8 September 1966, by Queen Elizabeth II, who hailed it as the dawn of a new economic era for South Wales. The bridge was granted Grade I listed status on 26 November 1999.
Read more about Severn Bridge: History, Component Structures, Post-construction Changes, Tolls, Ownership, 40 Year Inspections, Simultaneous Closures in 2009
Famous quotes containing the words severn and/or bridge:
“On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.”
—A.E. (Alfred Edward)
“Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs, though, it’s intimate and psychological—resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)