The Warrington engineer who specialised in bridges
John T. Webster, was an engineer from Warrington in Cheshire who specialised in bridges. His work included the 1905 Runcorn-Widnes Transporter Bridge and the 1915 road bridge at Warrington. He was also involved in proposals for a bridge across the River Mersey between Birkenhead and Liverpool in 1898 and made other suggestions for Warrington in the same decade.
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 Passengers and traffic on the Runcorn-Widnes transporter bridge |
He was the son of a former mayor of Warrington and his grandfather had been a member of the first Warrington Council. Educated at Warrington and Manchester University, he was a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and was awarded their highest prize, the Telford Gold Medal. He had also been a president of the Liverpool Engineering Society.
His work on bridges all over the world
In 1861 he started work for E.T. Bellhouse & Co., an engineering company in Manchester. During his ten years there (the last four as head draughtsman) he gained experience in the design and construction of bridges. He then worked for the Ashbury Carriage Company designing bridges for India (some of these bridges had to cope with elephant traffic).
He was in charge of the bridge department of Thomas Brassey & Co. for five years and was involved in the construction of the Liverpool landing stage. He later worked at Aberdeen Harbour in Scotland and spent four years as assistant to the Hull Docks Engineer on the east coast of England. He then started a private business in Liverpool before moving to Westminster in London to become a consultant engineer.
His works in Great Britain included piers at Dover (Kent), Minehead (Somerset), Bangor, Llandudno and Menai Bridge (North Wales) and the town bridge at Northwich in Cheshire. He was also involved in the reconstruction and widening of the Conway suspension bridge in North Wales. The Runcorn-Widnes Transporter Bridge was his most important work and he also worked on a similar bridge in South America. It has been suggested that he may have put forward designs for the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia.
The dangers of being an engineer
His work as an engineer led to some narrow escapes. He nearly drowned in diving operations at Hull, was hit in the head by a revolving winch handle on top of a gigantic wheel at Earls Court in London and almost fell off, and had his leg damaged by a large girder when it fell on him. He died in 1914, a month after making his last inspection of Warrington bridge, so he didn't see the completion of it as it was opened in 1915. | 
