View from WSW

Description View from WSW

Date 18/9/2001

Collection Records of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), Edinbu

Catalogue Number E 15009 CN

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 790873, SC 1935632

Scope and Content Drawbridge, Bowling Basin, Forth & Clyde Canal, West Dunbartonshire, from west-south-west This view looking underneath the 1896 railway swing bridge shows a drawbridge (bascule bridge) which was probably built in the early to mid-19th century. The two-leaved bridge is counterbalanced, which means that the timber leaves can be raised or lowered by the iron wheel and gearing mechanisms on each side of the canal. This bascule bridge would have been opened to allow passenger boats or puffers carrying cargo to pass along the canal. This style of bridge was ideally suited for canals and other waterways. Many of these bridges were removed and often replaced when road transport networks expanded in the late 20th century as they were too small for motor transport. Tower Bridge in London is an example of a large and ornate bascule bridge. The Forth & Clyde Canal was built between 1768 and 1790. It could have been completed sooner but funds ran out in 1777 and more money was not found by the government until 1784. John Smeaton (1724-92) was the designer and first chief engineer for the project. He was replaced in 1777 by Robert Mackell (d.1779), and in 1785 Robert Whitworth (1734-99) took over the building of the final section of the canal from Glasgow. When the canal was completed in 1790 it ran from the River Forth at Grangemouth, in the east, to Bowling on the River Clyde in the west of Scotland. The canal was linked to Edinburgh when the Union Canal was opened in 1822. The Forth & Clyde Canal was closed in 1963 and the Union Canal in 1965 and the construction of new roads meant that it was impossible for boats to travel along the full length of these watercourses. However, the £84.5m Millennium Link project enabled the canals to reopen in 2002. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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