A TEMPORARY bridge to take traffic during the strengthening of Pool Bridge was moved into place this week.

The last section of the 200 tonnes temporary Bailey Bridge across the River Wharfe was pulled into place by a boat on Tuesday.

Contractors will now put the surface of the bridge in place and lay the temporary road at each end to join up with the A658 Harrogate Road.

Traffic is expected to start using the two carriageway bridge by the end of March and all work should be finished by the middle of August.

Around 20 Leeds City Council engineers and contractors have been working on the almost £700,000 - including around £360,000 for the Bailey Bridge - project to strengthen the Grade Two listed bridge on the A658 Harrogate Road since early January.

The aim is to reinforce the foundations of the bridge to allow it to take 44 tonne vehicles - in line with a European directive which requires all major roads in Europe to take heavy vehicles.

The bridge, which is on the border of Leeds City Council and Harrogate Borough Council and has 'Pool' and 'Leathley' engraved into the stone - was originally a single carriageway.

The older, Castley side of the bridge, was built in the late 1700s as a single lane bridge.

The Otley side of the bridge was then added in the early part of the 19th Century to allow traffic to move in both directions at once.

Sarah Melville, assistant engineer, Leeds City Council, said it was the later section of the bridge - which receives the force of the water - which was now showing signs of weakness.

Once traffic has been stopped from crossing the bridge, investigations will take place into the bridge's foundations.

She said because of the age of the bridge and because they were unsure what they would find, council archaeologists would take part in the bridge investigations.

They will go down to the arches of the bridge where they expect the bridge will have been set on granular fill in use at the time.

That will then be replaced with concrete to make the bridge stronger and able to take heavy traffic.

That part of the work is not expected to take long and it is hoped the bridge will be open again by the end of July or middle of August.

Construction of the Bailey Bridge - which has cost more than half of the cost of the whole project - has been carried out by specialist bridge builders Janson.

Janson travel all over the world building bridges including a lot of work in Denmark.

The majority of the Bailey Bridge is former Army surplus equipment.

Described as a 'huge Meccano set' the bridge is made up of hundreds of separate sections - some weighing two tons each - will be two carriageways and will include a railed off footpath on the Castley side.

Although there will be two way traffic, the carriageways will be narrow and a 20 mph speed limit will be in force across the bridge.

Despite the speed limit and the necessary road diversions around the Shell filling station to get over the river, engineers are confident traffic will run smoothly.

Temporary traffic lights will be on for a short while to cover the time when the bridge is closed and traffic diverted to the new bridge.

Meanwhile, although last month's flood brought water into nearby Castley Lane homes and flooded workers Portacabins at the site, it did little to delay work on the bridge.