Isaac Johnson - surveyor and artist

In 1818 William Cubitt, the Ipswich civil engineer, commissioned Isaac Johnson to survey a road which would link (i) the landing area on the Sutton side of the ferry from the Tide Mill at Woodbridge and (ii)  the road (now the B1083) running from Wilford Bridge to Sutton. The proposed road was 3 km long and was perfectly straight. It would have intersected with the road to Sutton at the point where there is now a car park and picnic place for Sutton Heaths. The map does not reproduce well so the route is best shown here by superimposing the route of the road on a extract of the 2006 OS map.

Isaac Johnson's produced the map showing the route of the proposed road in September 1818 and William Cubit added his signature to the map when he deposited it with Clerk to the Suffolk Quarter Sessions on the 29th September 1818. The map does not reproduce well so the route is best shown here by superimposing the route of the road on a extract of the 2006 OS map.

The dotted line shows the proposed route of the road linking
the ferry to the he road running from Wilford Bridge to Sutton.
 

At high tide, the ferry from Woodridge ran from a causeway running between Ferry Quay and Tide Mill Quay. When the the water level fell people had to reach the ferry by walking along a "hard".  The route of the hard is shown by the red line superimposed upon this extract of the 1881 OS map.  At low tide the channel that the ferry had to cross was only about 60 ft wide.

When a copy of Isaac Johnson's map appeared in book by John Blatchly in 2014 it immediately became clear that there was a connection between the map and and a drawing which, for many years, had been in store room at Woodbridge Museum.  The drawing is an elevation and plan for a swing bridge over the River Deben at Woodbridge.  It was signed William Cubitt and dated 23 September 1818. The bridge was to be 53m long but only the central 10m section would have swung open to allow vessels to pass. Presumably the bridge would  been placed over the channel used by ferry at low water and that it would have been reached by creating a line of pontoons along the ferry hard leading to the low water channel. 

Photographs of the plan and elevation of the bridge are shown below.

There is no evidence that the idea of building of the road and the bridge was taken any further.

After his time in Suffolk Cubitt moved back to Norfolk and was engaged canal engineering projects. In 1825 he moved to London and became an expert witness at parliamentary enquires and four years later he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was chief engineer on the South Eastern railway to Dover and Folkestone and crossed to France to work on the line between Boulogne and Amiens.  Because of his major involvement  in the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1861 was knighted at Windsor by Queen Victoria.

 

Map showing the route of the low water ferry and of the hard which provided access to the ferry at all stages of the tide.

Elevation view of a swing bridge over the River Deben at Woodbridge.
 

Plan view of a swing bridge over the River Deben at Woodbridge.
 

Isaac Johnson of Woodbridge 1754-1835, John Blatchly and Peter Eden, published by Suffolk Record Office.

Isaac Johnson of Woodbridge Georgian Surveyor and Artist, John Blatchly, published in association with the Suffolk Record Office.

Last edited  4 Sept  23