1998: A New Bridge in Wales Receives a Royal Introduction

March 6, 1998

In northeastern Wales, a bridge in the county of Flintshire was formally opened. This cable-stayed bridge, spanning the Dee Estuary, connects both Flint and Connah’s Quay – each collectively classified as a town and community – with the area just north of the River Dee and at the southern part of the Wirral Peninsula.

Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022) officiated at the inauguration of the bridge. She was accompanied by her husband Prince Philip (1921-2021), Duke of Edinburgh. That day’s edition of the Court Circular, a listing of royal events issued by Buckingham Palace on a daily basis, highlighted this dedication ceremony.

The circular recounted, “The Queen named the bridge ‘the Flintshire Bridge’ [‘Pont Sir y Fflint’ in Welsh] and, with the Duke of Edinburgh, met members of the construction team and the public before driving over the bridge.”  

The four-lane Flintshire Bridge carries the road designated at A548 across the Dee Estuary. With a length of 965 feet (294 meters) and height of 387 feet (118 meters), this structure is the largest asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the entire United Kingdom.

Photo Credit: John S Turner (https://www.geograph.org.uk/profile/8378) – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

For more information on bridges in Wales, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridges_in_Wales