James Meadows Rendel

James Meadows Rendel FRS (December 1799 – 21 November 1856) was an English civil engineer.

Early life and career Rendel was the son of the surveyor James Rendel or Rendle and his wife Jane, daughter of the architect John Meadows (died 1791); he was born near Okehampton, Devon, in 1799. He was initiated into the operations of a millwright under an uncle at Teignmouth, while from his father he learned some civil engineering. At an early age he went to London as a surveyor under Thomas Telford, by whom he was employed on the surveys for the proposed suspension bridge across the Mersey at Runcorn. About 1822 he settled at Plymouth, and commenced the construction of roads in the north of Devon. One of his smaller projects, still surviving, was an 1826 bridge over Bowcombe Creek on the Kingsbridge Estuary.

In August 1824 he was employed by the Earl of Morley to make a bridge across the Catwater, an estuary of the Plym within the harbour of Plymouth at Laira. To guard against the undermining effects of the current, he formed an artificial bottom. The bridge, which cost £27,126, was opened on 14 July 1827. With the exception of John Rennie's 1819 Southwark Bridge over the Thames, it was the largest iron structure then existing, and in 1836 Rendel received a Telford Medal from the Institution of Civil Engineers for a paper describing its construction. In 1985, the firm was incorporated as Rendels Ltd; it trades today as Rendel Ltd.