While the work was in progress, Mr.Telford, the well-known engineer, carefully examined the bridge, and thus spoke of its condition at the time:--"The great improvement of erecting upon a navigable river a bridge of cast-iron of one arch only was first put in practice near Coalbrookdale.

The bridge was executed in 1777 by Mr.
Abraham Darby, and the ironwork is now quite as perfect as when it was first put up.

Drawings of this bridge have long been before the public, and have been much and justly admired." [11] A Coalbrookdale correspondent, writing in May, 1862, informs us that "at the present time the bridge is undergoing repair; and, special examination having been made, there is no appearance either that the abutments have moved, or that the ribs have been broken in the centre or are out of their proper right line.

There has, it is true, been a strain on the land arches, and on the roadway plates, which, however, the main arch has been able effectually to resist." The bridge has now been in profitable daily use for upwards of eighty years, and has during that time proved of the greatest convenience to the population of the district.

So judicious was the selection of its site, and so great its utility, that a thriving town of the name of Ironbridge has grown up around it upon what, at the time of its erection, was a nameless part of "the waste of the manor of Madeley." And it is probable that the bridge will last for centuries to come.
Thus, also, was the use of iron as an important material in bridge-building fairly initiated at Coalbrookdale by Abraham Darby, as the use of iron rails was by Richard Reynolds.