Discovering unsung engineer Newey
Dr Dennis Walters gave a talk at the Bathurst Book Fair over the weekend where he discussed his discovery of the works of Joseph Newey.
Newey was an engineer who was involved in the construction of most of the wagon bridges built between 1873 and 1900 in the Eastern Cape.
Giving a brief background on Newey’s upbringing, Walters mentioned how at the tender age of 14 years, Newey worked at his father’s firm where he learnt all aspects of working with iron in the Crown Works of Fleet & Newey in West Bromwich, UK.
During his time there he was involved in the design, working drawings, manufacturing supervision and erection on site of lattice girder iron bridges in England and abroad.
Newey quickly made a name for himself by successfully erecting bridges which had given other engineers trouble, such as for the Dora Riparia and Comba Scura rivers on the approach railway line to the Mount Cenis tunnel in Italy in 1872.
It is then that he was noticed in Africa and in December 1873 he was approached and employed on contract by the public works department of the Cape colonial government in SA to erect a two-span road bridge over the Buffalo River in King Williams Town (now Qonce).
Upon arrival in SA, his first work was the high three-span wrought iron lattice girder bridge over the Great Fish River at Committees Drift, in the Grahamstown (now Makhanda) district.
Walters applauded how Newey erected bridges successfully which other engineers had troubles with.
Newey was promoted as district inspector for the Eastern Region in 1882.
He was transferred to King William’s Town in 1885, from where he personally designed and had several more stone arch bridges erected at Cala, Barkly East, Lady Grey, Ugie and Maclear.
During his time, more than 70 iron and timber road bridges over dozens of rivers were initiated and erected by PWD personnel.
As a district inspector of the PWD, Newey was entrusted with the layout of many trunk road routes in the eastern parts of the Cape Colony and the Transkeian territories.
“These projects were regularly inspected by Newey in his four-wheel, two-horse drawn Spider,” Dr Walters said.
“Newey had to initiate and have many sandstone public buildings constructed in most of the towns of the region.”
Two years after retirement, the world-renowned designer died on January 9 1907 at his Peninsula farm in King William’s Town.