Comments :
Foundation Stone laid May, 1827. (Apparently designed by John Gibb, Civil Engineer and the plan was approved by Telford. John Smith 1781-1852 was the "Resident Engineer".) The Aberdeen to Peterhead road crosses the Don on a handsome five-arched granite masonry bridge designed by Telford in 1827. Although John Rennie and Robert Stevenson submitted designs for this bridge some years earlier there was a considerable delay before Telford's design, based on proposals by John Smith and John Gibb of Aberdeen, was finalised. By the end of 1828, before the bridge was finished, both of the outer piers subsided, despite being supported on piled foundations. The north pier ultimately subsided 212ft and the south pier 112 ft. To remedy the situation it was necessary to take down the adjacent arches and the piers that supported them and to increase the bearing capacity of the foundation by driving an additional 69 piles of increased length in each foundation. It was 1830 before the remedial work and the bridge were completed by John and Alexander Gibb of Aberdeen at the cost of £17 000. The bridge has given no further trouble and has carried a progressively increased weight of traffic since its completion. [RCAHMS], [SHIGH] 98, [INDHI] 85, [GIBB] 306, [BURT] 215, [MORR] 64
