Bronze Age Gold from Wales

The Kemeys Bridge Company Limited, £2.10s share, 1862, blue on lilac. * Black print on lilac with handwritten details completed in black ink. Embossed blue company seal at left with a view of the bridge. £2.10s share number '378'. Dated 17 June 1862.

The company was formed 1862 to operate the toll on the Chain Bridge at Kemeys Commander, Monmouthshire, built in 1829-30 by Brown Lenox & Co of Pontypridd, the internationally renowned chain makers and engineers. Sir Samuel Brown, founder of the company was a notable proponent and supplier of chain suspension bridges. Kemeys Bridge was one of only two he built in Wales although Telford used Brown’s patented system in the Conway and Menai Suspension Bridges. The company was dissolved in 1901 when the local authority acquired the bridge and extinguished the toll. The bridge was replaced by a fixed span in 1906 following its acquisition by the local authority but retains the name ‘chain bridge’. One of the few Welsh bridge companies, counterparts of the turnpike trusts which operated tolls on highways.