Why don’t we have wooden road bridges in the UK?

“why is timber not used for major bridges in the UK? It was the earliest material used in bridge construction and there is a history of wooden structures in Britain, the most notable being Brunel’s 54 wooden viaducts in southwest England that carried the South Devon Railway, Cornwall Railway and West Cornwall Railway. However, between 1870 and the 1930s, these were replaced by more durable masonry structures, as have all the major wooden viaducts and bridges.”

Following the collapse of a wooden bridge in Norway (pictured above), we at New Civil Engineer were curious whether timber bridges are more susceptible to collapse and whether that’s why we don’t have them in the UK… I spoke to an expert at WSP to get to the truth - read up over here.