View from west Digital image of E 15655 cn

Description View from west Digital image of E 15655 cn

Date 24/7/2001

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

Catalogue Number SC 769277

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of E 15655 CN

Scope and Content Crathie Suspension Bridge, Aberdeenshire, from the west This early example of a chain-suspension bridge was designed for vehicular traffic, and was the first to be built in Upper Deeside. The chain is not, however, a metal rope, but a succession of paired flat links which are suspended from two tapering latticework pylons at side of the river. Four diagonal rods ray out from each pylon and continue below the wooden deck to provide bracing. Truss rods below the bridge provide extra support. The bridge was the main approach over the river to the original Balmoral Castle, a small 15th-century Deeside castle which was reconstructed in the 1830s for Sir Robert Gordon. When Queen Victoria and Prince Albert bought the Balmoral estate in 1852, they built a new castle, and commissioned a new bridge. Prince Albert employed the renowned engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who designed a novel but practical, single-span plate-girder bridge 0.8km upstream from the suspension bridge. Queen Victoria, however, never liked it, and Brunel never asked for his fee. Crathie Suspension Bridge was built in 1834 by the engineers, Justice Junior & Company of Dundee, as the main route across the River Dee to Balmoral. It was superseded in 1857 by the Balmoral Bridge, a more solid substitute commissioned by Prince Albert after he and Queen Victoria bought the Balmoral estate in 1852, and partly renewed in 1885 by Blaikie Brothers of Aberdeen at Queen Victoria's expense. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/769277

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap