MOTORISTS will be able to look forward to a less stressful route into Oxford from tomorrow after traffic management on Folly Bridge ends.

Oxfordshire County Council had to shut off one of the two lanes on Abingdon Road to carry out work on the east side of the Grade II listed bridge.

It has carried out work on the bridge since September 4 but traffic management was first put up on September 20 and has slowed the 15,000 motorists which use the bridge every day since then.

Engineers extracted bricks on the east side by drilling down through the road and taken them out from above. Some of the bricks, which were first used when the bridge was built in 1820, are about half a metre thick.

Resurfacing work on Abingdon Road has fully closed the bridge overnight since that started on October 11. By 6am tomorrow all the works will have been completed.

A team of about 30 engineers have worked day and night to replace limestone bricks on the underside of the bridge which have been left cracked as a result of water permeating through Abingdon Road over the course of years, freezing and splitting them.

The council has shelled out £500,000 for the work and replaced them with hard wearing Bath stone, which should withstand frosts for decades.

Although the road will be open, engineers will need to undertake work on the bridge's west side until the middle of next month.

The work had taken 18 months to plan but could only be carried out in the autumn because of bats that roost underneath the bridge.

They have been safely moved to another part of the River Thames in Oxford and will be able to go back to live under the bridge once the work has been completed.