Engineers, Architects and Surveyors.

My in-laws are, in the current idiom, 'downsizing' their home and a lot of accumulated bits and pieces are going in the process. One of these is a book with the wordy title of  "Thomas Farnolls Pritchard of Shrewsbury. Architect And 'Inventor Of Cast Iron Bridges' ", by Julia Ionides, architectural historian, who is a friend of my in-laws. They have given me this book, which is a history of Pritchard's work as an architect on the Welsh/English border in the 18th century. I'm a Civil Engineer, so my particular interest was the chapter on Pritchard's bridge designs, including the one for the world's first cast-iron bridge, Iron Bridge, in Shropshire. Iron Bridge is a landmark both in the area and in engineering history, having been described by the great Engineer, Thomas Telford, as forming ' an era in bridge building'. Pritchard had previously been appointed as 'Surveyor' for a bridge in Shrewsbury and the author describes him as '...one of the early architect-engineers...', hence the title of the post. Oh, and my father-in-law is a retired Chartered Surveyor!