View from south

Description View from south

Date 4/6/2001

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

Catalogue Number SC 768787

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of E 15546 CN

Scope and Content Bridge of Dee, Invercauld, Aberdeenshire, from the south (Old Invercauld Bridge) This remarkable six-spanned, hump-backed rubble bridge spans the River Dee some distance upstream from Balmoral at a rocky bend in the river where reefs of rock cross the flow of water. Each span is a different size, the largest being under the highest point of the roadway, and the smallest, which act as effective flood arches, being built completely on dry land and obscured by the trees. It is asymmetric, which rather adds to its charm, and has unusually tall triangular cutwaters with roofs of large flags. When Queen Victoria and Prince Albert bought the Balmoral estate in 1852, one of the roads that ran from Ballater to Braemar followed the winding course of the south bank of the River Dee through the estate to the Bridge of Dee at Invercauld. Up to this point this road had been used only by local people, but now that Balmoral had become a royal residence, privacy for the royal couple and their young family had to be ensured and this old stretch of road was closed. Prince Albert financed the building of two new bridges at the eastern and western approaches to the estate, so that traffic coming upstream from Ballater by-passed the estate by travelling along the north bank of the river to a new bridge at Invercauld where it could rejoin the south bank road. The new Invercauld bridge, upstream from the old, put the Bridge of Dee out of service in 1859. Bridge of Dee at Invercauld was designed in 1753 by the engineer, Major Edward Caulfield, as a military bridge to link Corgarff in the north with Inverness, and Blairgowrie in the south. It was superseded in 1859 by a new Invercauld Bridge, built at the expense of Prince Albert in order to secure his privacy on the Balmoral estate, which he and Queen Victoria purchased in 1852. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/768787

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap