River Gipping Restoration

Creeting Footbridge

The narrow (1m wide) footbridge over the old river where it joins the Gipping, just downstream of Creeting lock has been closed by Suffolk Council for safety reasons for around around four years now. Both the upstream and downstream brick abutments are badley cracked. It is an essential part of the Gipping Valley River Path and the deviation around it takes you along the busy B113, around ½ Km away.

The Trust have met up with the Council’s Area Rights of Way Manager twice on site, the last in December 2022 with their structural engineer who has advised that the footbridge is irreparable and a new one will have to be constructed. The Council will now work on a design, likely with two new abutments and produce a ‘scope of work’ which they will share with the Trust which will allow us to consider how much assistance we are able to give (from a technical and manpower perspective).

We have provisionally agreed that the new footbridge will be wider (1.2m) with a ramp up to it (instead of the current two steps) to facilitate a future wheelchair friendly path. Although the footbridge only crosses a much narrower waterway, it will likely be quite a few metres longer than our new one at Baylham, and would almost undoubtedly have to be a steel beamed bridge. The intent is to get it reopened as quickly as possible, but sadly this won’t be any time soon.