I’ve been watching a narrowboat channel from England and there are very many beautiful brick bridges with a nice arch over the canal. I understand how the arch holds the bridge up.
I don’t understand how they built the arch in the first place without the bricks falling. They were built a couple hundred years ago.
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The most common technique is to first build a wooden frame in the shape of the arch. Of course no traffic can move under the bridge as it would hit this wooden frame. But when the brick arch have been fully constructed on this wooden frame and the mortar have dried the wooden frame can be slid out and the brick arch will remain standing. A lot of canal bridges are built this way. The wood frame can be reused for multiple bridges. The canal is exactly the same width under each bridge so the same frame fits all of them.
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