Bridges – Rochester Cathedral

The world’s longest interlocking brick bridge will fill the nave and form the centrepiece of summer activities at Rochester Cathedral this August.

It’s all about bridges at Rochester Cathedral this summer – with the longest interlocking bridge installed in the nave and adventure golf in the garden.

More than 200,000 bricks have been clicked together to create the bridge which will form part of a summer of family activities organised by the Rochester Bridge Trust.

The nine-hole bridges adventure golf will also return to the Cathedral this summer, this time taking place in the Cathedral Garden. It attracted huge interest when it first opened in the nave in 2019.

The All About Bridges event will be installed in the nave ready for its opening on August 1.

Bridge Clerk Sue Threader, Chief Executive of the Rochester Bridge Trust, explained:

“This free summer activity is designed to engage children, families and others with civil engineering in an open, easily accessible place for the community.

“We hope that learning through play and experiencing the scale model will encourage visitors to think about the impact of bridges and the challenges of construction. This is important for breaking down stereotypes and helping children to approach science and engineering with an open mind, so they want to find out more.”

The world record-breaking bridge was constructed by BRICKLIVE and created for the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE).

Alongside this centrepiece will be a selection of hands-on bridge-building activities in the Nave while the nine-hole bridges adventure golf is being brought back for another year and will be installed in the garden.

This nine-hole course introduces different bridge types to participants, with information panels explaining their construction and where real-world examples of each bridge can be seen. While primarily aimed at families and children, the model bridge and adventure golf are open to all and are free of charge.

Rochester Cathedral is open daily, visit www.rochestercathedral.org for opening times.
Visit www.rbt.org.uk/AllAboutBridges for more information about the bookable activities.
Visit www.rochesterbridgetrust.org.uk to find out more about the Trust’s engineering education initiative.

The bridge will be on display from the 1-29th August.

Picture caption
The world-record-breaking bridge pictured here in the library of the Institute of Civil Engineers which commissioned it.