Civil engineering: the Wearmouth Iron Bridge at Sunderland, with ships sailing beneath, and details (above). Coloured engraving by J. Pass, 1799.

The Wearmouth Iron Bridge was opened over the River Wear at Sunderland in 1796 and replaced in the 1920s. It was described at length in the Encyclopedia londinensis (where the present plate was published), beginnning "A considerable improvement [over the Coalbrookdale bridge], however, in the construction of iron bridges, for lightness, simplicity, and saving of material, has more recently taken place. The most elegant and ingenious structure of this kind, is the bridge erected by R. Burdon, Esq. over the Wear at Sunderland, being the result of an invention guaranteed to him by letters patent dated September 18, 1795 ... The blocks and tubes above specified [as shown in the engraving] are those used in the construction of the arch of the bridge erected across the river Wear, at Wearmouth, near Sunderland, in the county of Durham, represented in the plate at fig. 3 ... " (Encyclopaedia londinensis, vol. III, London 1810, pp. 393-394)