The Humber Bridge held the world’s longest suspension-bridge main span from 1981 until 1998.
The bridge crosses the Humber estuary between Hessle in East Yorkshire and Barton-upon-Humber in North Lincolnshire, England. It opened in 1981 after construction that began in 1973. Its main span measures 1,410 metres, and the total bridge length is about 2,220 metres.
For 17 years, the Humber Bridge had the longest suspension-bridge span in the world. It lost that record when Japan’s Akashi Kaikyō Bridge opened in 1998 with a 1,991-metre central span. The Humber crossing remains a major transport link between northern Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.
Its record is sometimes mistakenly attributed to the nearby Humber Estuary as a whole or confused with the Severn Bridge. The Severn crossing is another important British bridge, but it did not hold this particular global span record during the Humber Bridge’s record period.