"Fowler's Bridges" by Aidan Bell

Sir John Fowler is best known (with Sir Benjamin Baker) as one of the engineers responsible for the Forth Railway Bridge, completed in 1890, a masterpiece of Victorian civil engineering. During his illustrious career, Fowler was responsible for many other bridges and railways, including much of what is now the Circle Line on the London Underground.

Aidan Bell's book "Fowler's Bridges" (self-published and available from biblio.com, ISBN 978-1-5272-7661-1, 190pp, 2020) deals with the engineer's most famous works only in passing. Instead it is an in-depth study of the estate that Fowler developed at Braemore, near Ullapool in Scotland, and the bridges that he built there, many with Baker's assistance.

Fowler's life story is one of almost constant upward progress. Born in 1817, Fowler set himself on a career in engineering as soon as he left school. His first few years saw him apprenticed to John Towlerton Leather, George Leather and John Urpeth Rastrick. He rapidly took on increasing responsibility, before setting up independently at the age of 26 in 1843. It was the period of railway mania, and Fowler was in the thick of it, taking on chief engineer roles and promoting schemes in Parliament.

By 1849, Fowler was elected to the Council of the Institution of Civil Engineers, going on to become its President in 1865. By that time his consulting practice had grown substantially and was working on over 70 large projects each year. Fowler's army of assistants were based at premises in London, where he also had his main residence.

Also in 1865, Fowler bought the first of two estates near Ullapool in northern Scotland, Braemore, merging it two years later with the adjacent Inverbroom estate. This was to be his holiday home, and he would spend two months of each year there. A new house was built, with innovations including hydro-electric power for electric lighting, and many improvements were made to access around the estate. Fowler had become a proper Victorian gentleman, eventually adding a Baronetcy to his Knighthood, enjoying the Highland hunting life, and entertaining guests at what must have seemed a very remote place to some.

In this painstakingly detailed book, Aidan Bell recounts the story of Fowler's life and career, and documents the Braemore estate, providing detailed descriptions of several "miniature" bridges which Fowler had installed within the landscape. The estate was very different in character to many of those of the landed gentry, with its rough terrain and steep river gorges. The only comparable landscaped Victorian estate seems to be William Armstrong's Cragside.

Two of the estate bridges are relatively well-known: Corrieshalloch Suspension Bridge, and Auchindrean Bridge. The bridge at Corrieshalloch stands out for its situation above a waterfall, allowing visitors spectacular views of the river gorge. The Auchindrean bridge spans a less dramatic location, but is notable as the largest lenticular bridge surviving in Scotland today. It has similarities to Brunel's larger Saltash bridge.

The other bridges are less spectacular, but interesting in how Braemore was treated very differently to other Victorian estates. As an engineer, Fowler seems to have had little interest in the sort of faux-classicism that decorated the property of other wealthy landowners. The Braemore bridges are economically appropriate solutions to difficult terrain, rather than ornamental. They are for the most part aesthetically unspectacular, encouraging the visitor to look away from the bridge and admire the scenic grandeur instead.

Bell's book is heavy on detail. Many of the bridges no longer exist, but each bridge site is described in detail, with photographs and even diagrams to illustrate the structural behaviour of each bridge. It is, to be fair, so much detail that it is likely to be too much for the casual reader, but I certainly enjoyed its thoroughness. The book may be best suited to anyone with an interest in Fowler himself, or Scottish historic bridges generally, or the way in which an estate's development illustrated the expertise and philosophy of an engineering owner.

For me it raises interesting questions around taste. The desire of others to ornament their lands with the mock-Palladian, columns and porticos and pediments taken out of context and plopped down amidst soft green vistas seems to be a taste that has survived today. Prince Charles is perhaps the most notorious modern proponent of a belief that beauty can be found mainly in the past, and that the tics and tropes of the classical are a timeless aesthetic, rather than a pastiche shorn of meaning when taken out of context.

As an engineer, Fowler is more likely to have seen the problem that needed solving as one of spanning an obstacle, rather than decorating a view. The functional nature of the Braemore bridges suggests a love of a more natural landscape, and a desire to make his intrusions into it as modest as was possible. It seems an aesthetic approach to admire and emulate: bridges creating new spaces to admire the surroundings rather than to function primarily as sculpture. There are designers still working today who could benefit from that philosophy.

"Bridging the Tweed" by Jim Lyon

Hello readers. I'm back. Did I miss anything while I was away?

Anyway ...

Bridging the Tweed (self-published, ISBN 978-1-5272-5384-1, 290pp) surveys the bridges of the River Tweed from its source in the Lowther Hills in southern Scotland, to Berwick-upon-Tweed, where it passes into the North Sea.

The author Jim Lyon was born in nearby Hawick, and spent many years as a civil engineer before retiring to the Tweed valley. For a time he worked as a bridge engineer for Maunsell, both in the UK and overseas.

His book took over a decade to write, and describing it as a "labour of love" would hardly do it justice. In addition to detailed accounts of every bridge over the river (including those no longer existing), it diverts (at length) to cover a wide range of related subjects, including historic towns, features of interest, and historic personalities. From time to time, it also wanders briefly up tributaries of the Tweed, allowing it to draw in fine bridges such as the Roxburgh Viaduct Footbridge and Twizel Bridge.

Some readers will love the frequent digressions while others may find them an irritant - it's certainly the case that no stone is left unturned in this book.

The book immediately makes clear what a remarkable heritage of bridges there is along the Tweed, and I was a little startled to discover that I've only reported on three of them, the suspension bridges at Gattonside and Dryburgh, and the Union Chain Bridge.

Many of the bridges are of course prosaic, but even amongst the lesser-known bridges, the author explains how a bridge originally intended to be built in South Sudan came to span the Tweed, discusses a bridge used mainly by sheep, and documents a plastic composite bridge made from recycled milk bottles and car bumpers.

Particularly notable bridges featured in the book include the old bridge at Peebles, the pioneering Kingsmeadows, Galashiels and Dryburgh bridges, Leaderfoot Viaduct, Kalemouth Suspension Bridge, Kelso Bridge, Coldstream Bridge, and the trio of bridges at Berwick. Amongst many bridges that were new to me I'd highlight the unusual and innovative Woodend Footbridge, the charming Ashiestiel Bridge, and the impressive shallow arches of Mertoun Road Bridge.

As just one example of the many bridge-related tales in the book, there is plenty of detail on how celebrated architect Basil Spence and world-famous engineer Ralph Freeman designed but failed to complete a bridge in Peebles, quite a sorry tale of hubris and muddle.

Characters who appear in the book include many famous bridge-builders such as Brown, Stephenson, Telford, Rennie, Smeaton, Adam Clark, Fairbairn, Robert and William Mylne, John Miller, and of course the unfortunate Ralph Freeman. Amongst the others who have played a part in Tweed history (including its bridges) are Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Earl Haig, Mary Somerville, and Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane. They each get a turn in the spotlight, alongside a lesser-known cast such as the county surveyor whose mother fell victim to an axe-murderer, and the Johannesburg mayor who funded a new bridge across the river.

For a self-published book, it is generally of very good quality, well written and illustrated with plenty of colour photographs and images. There are occasional gremlins such as misplaced photo captions, and although there is a comprehensive bibliography, the lack of referencing is a disappointment - it looks like the draft text included references but these were omitted in the published version.

My only other quibble is that there is (relatively) little about the river itself, its wildlife or ecology. The majority of the book focuses on human artefacts and human goings-on. Nonetheless, this book should be valuable both to armchair pontists and those interested in the history of the Tweed Valley. It is not widely available, but at the time of writing this post, Main Street Books have it for sale online.

"The Queensferry Crossing - Vision to Reality" by David Watt

This the second of three "souvenir" books about recent major bridges in the UK that I'm going to feature here.

The Queensferry Crossing - Vision to Reality (Lily Publications, 224 pp, 2017) is a hefty, coffee-table tome, documenting Scotland's latest big bridge in exquisite detail. Grab the hardback if you get the chance, but the reprint softback is good value at £18.95 (both editions can currently be found on amazon.co.uk at reduced prices).

The author, David Watt, was for six years the Communications Manager for Forth Crossing Bridge Constructors, and brings to the book a combination of thoroughness and clarity. Compared to the Mersey Gateway book that I discussed last time, this is a much more in-depth document, diving much further into the detail of how the project was delivered.

As with the Mersey Gateway, the Queensferry Crossing is a three-tower cable-stayed bridge, but at a significantly larger scale, with a longest span of 650m compared to 300m. The towers at Queensferry are some 207m tall, and the bridge deck sits much higher above much deeper water. The scale and location mean that several aspects of design and construction were very difficult.

A key design challenge for a multi-span cable-stay bridge is how to provide adequate stiffness, as only a limited number of cables are effectively anchored to the ground through end piers or abutments. The Mersey Gateway relies on the stiffness of the bridge deck to reduce demand on the towers, while the Queensferry Crossing adopts a more innovative solution, with crossover of cables at midspan providing the necessary rigidity. Queensferry is not unique (see for example the Viaduc sur la Rocade Sud in Rennes, France), but I think it pioneered this solution at such a large scale.

The Mersey Gateway was constructed with the help of a temporary access bridge, but this was not feasible for its Scottish cousin. Accordingly, one of the bridge's biggest challenges was logistical: where to fabricate and assemble the components, and access to the mast positions via boat. Many of the components were produced overseas (in Poland and in China, for example), and fortunately the project benefited from the proximity to the bridge of Rosyth Docks, a large area of which was taken over by the contractor and used as a storage, assembly, and casting yard.

The book is split into nine chapters, topped and tailed with discussion of the need for a bridge, project development and procurement, and sections on community engagement, environmental issues, and the bridge opening celebrations. There's a lengthy credits list for firms involved in the project, but I did find it extremely odd that the book nowhere mentions the bridge's architect, Dissing + Weitling, who seem to have been largely written out of the project's history.

The core of the book covers the bridge's design and construction, although the challenges of writing about design are apparent in that it gets only 10 pages while construction gets 118 pages. Every section of the book is well illustrated, often with spectacular photographs, and the construction section also has plenty of detail - even down to an image of the cable strand wedges!

As a record of the project, it's fantastic, but after a while the level of detail does get a little numbing, and I can't admit to having absorbed it all.

The book goes out of its way to recognise some of the many people involved in the project, with lots of images of members of the project team, and interviews with five of them.

Further information:

• Official website
• Queensferry Crossing ARChive - online repository of project information

"Bridgescapes" by L. Bruce Keith

Bridgescapes (Dunnottar Productions Limited, 184pp, 2017) is a timely survey of Scotland's bridge heritage, published to coincide with the completion of the Queensferry Crossing. This tremendous new cable-stayed design is the 21st century neighbour to a 20th century and 19th century bridge, each an impressive example of historic achievement.

This new book is aptly subtitled "A personal journey through history celebrating Scotland's bridge-building heritage". L. Bruce Keith is an experienced surveyor (indeed, a recent President of CIWEM), but not a bridge specialist by any means. He traces his interest in bridges to his father, who was a local authority engineer responsible for bridges in the Highlands of Scotland. His book is dotted throughout with autobiographical detail, which lends a pleasingly informal touch, although much of the personal history is not directly bridge-related.

The bulk of the book is arranged chronologically, with chapters covering medieval bridges, the 18th century etc. Four chapters on 19th century bridges are arranged thematically: canals, highways, railways, and an entire chapter for the failure and success of the Tay and Forth bridges. The coverage is up to date, with a number of 21st century structures, and a chapter of its own for the Queensferry Crossing.

This is a book which will be of interest to many, although its primary audience is the general public, especially those with an interest in history, geography and architecture. As the author notes right from the beginning, "This book is not intended for 'anoraks'". There's an extensive bibliography, but nothing in the way of footnoting or references. One occasional casualty of this is factual accuracy: there are a number of claims of "firsts" and "longests" which I doubt would survive thorough scrutiny. There are also quite a few typos including a repeated mis-spelling of Babtie (as in John Babtie, whose firm Babtie and Bonn became Babtie, Shaw and Morton, eventually assimilated into the Jacobs borg in 2004).

There are also a number of omissions, although no doubt only the anoraks would be greatly concerned with many of them: Craigmin Bridge, Faery Bridge, Falls of Gharb Allt Footbridge, Maryhill House Footbridge, Roxburgh Viaduct Footbridge, Gogarburn Bridge, and Greenside Link Place Bridge are examples just from those that I've had the good fortune to visit. However, I don't see this as a significant criticism given the book's many good points.

The book opens with a reasonable introduction to the classic structural forms and materials of bridges, drawing on the many relevant Scottish examples and well illustrated with archive and newly taken photographs. This sets the tone for the remainder of the book, which is well-written, informative, sensibly prioritised, and filled with high quality images. On this count, it's great value for money, and even the anoraks should discover plenty that they didn't know, or had forgotten.

A chapter near the end of the book addresses the worldwide legacy of Scottish bridge builders and designers, which I think is a very welcome inclusion. It brings home the significance of well-known Scots such as Robert Mylne, John Rennie, Thomas Telford, and William Arrol, but also features significant but lesser known names such as Louis Harper, Peter Seton Hay and Alexander Nimmo (plus many more I'd never heard of).

I very much enjoyed Bridgescapes. It's indispensable for anyone with a serious interest in Scotland's bridges, and should be enjoyed by others with a more casual appreciation.

For details of how to purchase the book, contact the author at lbrucekeith@yahoo.co.uk.

Update 20th November: Readers of The Happy Pontist can purchase Bridgescapes for a discounted price of £18 (UK) and £25 (overseas), which I think is tremendously good value!

Scottish Bridges: 57. Abergeldie Castle Bridge (after the flood)

This is the third of three flood-damaged bridges that I visited on the River Dee in Aberdeenshire during August 2016.

When I visited in 2012, the bridge was derelict and had been so for some time. At the time, I said:

I’d be astonished if the deck is still there in ten year’s time, so if, like me, you have a soft spot for derelict bridges, I suggest you visit it while you still can.

That opportunity is now gone, as the bridge collapsed during the Christmas 2015 floods.

A video on YouTube makes clear why the bridge collapsed: the entire southern bank of the river was extensively scoured away by the flood (compare my 2012 photos to see quite how much has gone).

Survival of the adjacent Abergeldie Castle was clearly a far greater concern than the bridge. The bridge's southern tower and anchorages were simply swept away along with the rest of the river bank - you can still see a remnant of the main suspension cable anchors in one of my photographs.

This video shows some of the river bank protection works in progress during January 2016, as well as the remnants of the bridge;

It's a huge shame that this bridge has gone - it was of an unusual type with two suspension cables on each side, one above the other. I'm not sure how many other 4-cable suspension bridges there now are in the UK, if any.

The Abergeldie Castle bridge was originally built by Blaikie Brothers on the instructions of Queen Victoria, at roughly the same time as she authorised them to improve the Crathie bridge discussed in my previous post. A contemporary article on the building of the Abergeldie bridge can be found in The Engineer, 7th August 1885 (page 103), and I reproduce here the accompanying bridge plans:

While preparing this blog post, I also found a photograph of the 'bridge' which predated the suspension bridge. This was a cableway structure, used to transport mostly goods and the occasional person. It's what would nowadays be called a "bucket bridge", and there are precious few of these still in use (possibly just two in Scotland):

It was unfortunate that the local planning authority took no enforcement action on Abergeldie Castle bridge's owner to preserve the structure over a number of years as it was gradually allowed to deteriorate, but nothing could have saved it from the 2015 storm.

Anyway, here are some pictures of what remains of the Abergeldie Castle bridge. The bridge pylon from the south bank was swept downstream but remained attached to the north pier, so that almost all of the bridge's wreckage now rests on the north bank.

 

Scottish Bridges: 56. Crathie Suspension Bridge (after the flood)

This is the second of three damaged bridges that I visited on the River Dee in Scotland during August 2016.

Built in 1834 and modified in the 1880s, this is a remarkable and highly unusual bridge, with a bizarre set of hybrid structural supports both above and below the bridge deck. When I visited in 2012, it was in great condition.

Following the Christmas 2015 floods, the bridge has been declared unsafe and closed to users.

It doesn't appear that the bridge has suffered much damage. There is no change to the tie-back rods from what I saw in 2012.

One of the deck edge rods is loose, but this is not new.

The only significant damage I observed was where one of the deck edge rods is broken. This should be straightforward to repair.

I'd hope this bridge can be repaired and reopened without too much further delay, but as with the bridge at Cambus O'May, it doesn't provide any vital access, so it won't be a priority for the local authority.

Scottish Bridges: 55. Cambus O'May Bridge (after the flood)

A couple of weeks ago, I visited the River Dee in Aberdeenshire, and returned to three bridges which I had previously seen in the Summer of 2012.

At Christmas 2015, the Dee experienced one of the most severe floods in its history, along with several other rivers in Britain. A number of bridges along the river were severely damaged, and one destroyed.

Cambus O'May Bridge was built in 1905 by James Abernethy & Co., and then substantially rebuilt in 1988. It's a very fine pedestrian suspension bridge, one of many along the River Dee. It looked good on my 2012 visit.

It's amazing that the bridge survived the 2015 flood at all, as the level of water battering the bridge can be seen in the video below:

When I visited in mid-August 2016, the damage to the bridge is clear. Unsurprisingly, it is currently closed, with no sign of any plans for repair work.

The entire structure has been bent sideways by the force of the water.

Several of the bridge hangers are missing or bent.

Most significantly, there is major damage to one bay of the main deck lattice truss, presumably due to impact from debris.

I think the most likely future for this bridge is another reconstruction, as I think it would be inordinately difficult to cut out and replace the most damaged section and to straighten the remainder of the bridge. That seems unlikely to happen any time soon, as the bridge does not provide critical access to anyone, and I imagine there are other priorities for limited budgets.

"River, Railway and Ravine: Foot Suspension Bridges for Empire" by Douglas Harper

Here is a lovely work of special-interest history. River, Railway and Ravine (The History Press, 2015, 164pp) [amazon.co.uk] documents the suspension bridges of John and Louis Harper, Aberdeenshire fence-makers turned bridge-builders.

Between 1870 and 1910, the Harpers designed and built over 40 suspension footbridges, mostly in the UK, but also as far afield as India, Nepal, Estonia, South Africa and the West Indies. Few survive now, and I've only visited one, at Newquay, although there are bridges built by the Aberdeen firm of James Abernethy in which Louis Harper may have had a hand, such as those at Aberlour and Cambus O'May.

Descendant of the Harper family, Douglas Harper, has been researching his family's engineering history for some time, with much of it documented on the Harper Bridges website. Now, this excellent book offers far more detail on the family firm's achievements, and I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in historical suspension bridges.

The Harpers were innovators in their field: early users of steel wire rope; developers of a specialist wire-tensioning device; and users of pre-tensioned cables at deck level to greatly increase the stiffness of their designs.

The book gives a good history of the family, and their work both in fencing and then bridge-making, and puts this in context with a chapter exploring other suspension bridge developments in the 19th century.

The main part of the book offers detailed discussions of every bridge built by John Harper, and his son Louis. These are accompanied by numerous well-reproduced photographs and drawings, both present-day and archival. The level of research presented is remarkable.

What makes the book a particularly enjoyable read is the personal touch, as the author has attempted to visit as many of the bridges sites as he could, even where long-since demolished. In particular, the tale of his trip to Nepal turns the book from a simple historical record into a narrative which brings the past very much to life.

10 essential bridges books: 4. Highland Bridges

Out of many bridge guidebooks in my collection, Gillian Nelson's Highland Bridges (Aberdeen University Press, 224pp, 1990) [amazon.co.uk] is my favourite.

In her introductory essay, Nelson discusses the three basic types of bridge: beam bridge, arch bridge, and suspension bridge. It seems to me that the remainder of the book then goes on to comprehensively demonstrate how futile such simple categorisations can be.

The book is a product of the author's own extensive explorations of the Scottish Highlands, and documents a truly fabulous variety of bridges both historic and modern. It is arranged geographically, so that, for example, all the bridges of Lower Speyside form a chapter. Each bridge is given a map reference, and, where necessary, directions by which to find it. The text combines factual details on the nature and history of the bridges with the author's own opinions, and there are a good number of photographs.

These may seem like the basic essentials for any guidebook, but it is amazing how few books in this field manage to do such a good job. Highland Bridges is both reasonably comprehensive, detailed and yet highly readable. It is a friendly book, suitable for readers both lay and expert, and of the type that makes you immediately wish to plan a bridge-viewing journey.

This book introduced me to a number of bridges which I would not otherwise have encountered, mostly notably the astonishing Craigmin Bridge, but also the beautiful Maryhill House footbridge. Its coverage is generally excellent, with both the famous and the unknown given equal space.

What jumps out at me the most is the sheer variety of types of bridges to be found in the Scottish Highlands. There are many beautiful stone arches and quite a few charming suspension bridges, but also a staggering range of oddities, such as the fortress-like concrete Findhorn Bridge; the intricate Dredge designs at Whin Park and Bridge of Oich; rare timber trestles at Broomhill and Aultnaslanach; and much, much more. I think there are few areas of the United Kingdom so well equipped with such fascinating, intriguing and bizarre bridges.

River Dee Footbridge, Braemar

Many thanks to Moxon Architects for sending me through some images of a pedestrian suspension bridge they have designed with Flint and Neill at Braemar, in Scotland.

The bridge is, as yet, unfunded, but I guess it would make a welcome addition to the locality as there's no bridge across the River Dee in the immediate vicinity, and the area is popular with walkers and other tourists. I stopped off there during my tour of Scottish bridges last year. What's immediately noticeable about the Moxon / Flint proposal is how it consciously echoes a number of other white-painted suspension footbridges in the vicinity, particularly those at Garbh Allt Shiel, Crathie, Polhollick and Cambus O' May. Moxon kindly provide a cut-out-and-keep guide to these spans to emphasise the point (click any image to see it full size).

The longest of those bridges spans 55m, and if built, the bridge at Braemar would dwarf them, being 85m long (the span may be one reason there is no such bridge here already).

The structural design is a trussed suspension bridge, with triangulated hangers offering considerably greater stiffness than the more conventional vertical hangers provide (the cost is the need to prestress all the hangers to prevent any becoming loose). The preview images also show tie-down cables at either end, which will also provide considerable stiffness. The bridge deck consists of white precast concrete units, which will help damp vibrations.

The main cables are inclined outwards and connected to V-shaped masts, so they are curved vertically in plan as well as elevation - this helps stiffen the deck against lateral sway (again, there is a cost, in the need for a more exacting erection methodology). I can't see a structural reason for why the masts are inclined backwards away from the river, but would be interested to hear if there is one.

I've included a few more images of the design below. If I were a betting Pontist, I'd bet this design will prove too expensive for the site, although the history of bridging the River Dee is one of reliance on wealthy benefactors to the community, so I may be proven wrong.

A simpler bridge design would perhaps use main cables in the conventional vertical plane, with inclined counter-cables below the deck to provide combined vertical and lateral stiffening. A timber or galvanised steel mesh deck would also keep costs down, although such a bridge has very little damping and hence be much easier to excite into motion.