Grace's Guide
British Industrial History
Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 132,597 pages of information and 209,980 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.
Rowland Mason Ordish
From Graces Guide
Rowland Mason Ordish (1824-1886), engineer.
son of John Ordish.
1860 Responsible for the details of construction of the 'Amsterdam Crystal Palace', the contractors for which were Van Heel and Holtzman of Amsterdam and Smith and Son of Spring-hill Works, Birmingham.[1]. Note: Smith & Son was a partnership of Henry Smith and Henry George Smith.
1863 Designed the ironwork for Amsterdam station, Dutch Rhenish Railway. The roof had a span of 120 ft.[2]
1864 Designed a cable-stayed/suspension road bridge to cross the River Moldau in Prague. Contracts were signed in August 1865 with Ruston & Co of Prague (ironwork) and M. F. Schon of Prague for the masonry. The towers were of cast iron on masonry piers. The chain links, measuring 4" by 1", were made from 'Shortridge and Howell's homogeneous steel'. [3]
Ordish designed the Franz-Joseph Bridge, opened in 1868, to cross the River Moldau in Prague. It was a pedestrian bridge with a central tower and a main span of 146m. It was replaced in 1951.[4]
1886 Died. Buried in Highgate Cemetery. Read his obituary in The Engineer 1886/09/17.
See Also
Sources of Information
- ↑ Leeds Intelligencer - Saturday 14 January 1860
- ↑ 'A Record of the Progress of Modern Engineering' edited by William Humber, 1863-5. Some of the drawings are reproduced in 'A History of Cast Iron in Architecture' by John Gloag and Derek Bridgwater, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1948
- ↑ [1] 'The Engineer' 27 April 1866
- ↑ [2] Structurae website - Bridge over the Moldau