View looking along deck from north Digital image of E 15689 cn

Description View looking along deck from north Digital image of E 15689 cn

Date 24/7/2001

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

Catalogue Number SC 769279

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of E 15689 CN

Scope and Content Crathie Suspension Bridge, Aberdeenshire, from the north This romantic chain-suspension bridge, the earliest of its type to be built in Upper Deeside, spans the river in a picturesque setting. The chain is not, however, a metal rope but a succession of paired flat links which are suspended from two tapering latticework pylons on either side of the river. The bridge has wooden decking which originally was designed to take carriages, and the iron framework is painted white which increases its appearance of lightness. The decreasing circles in the flat arches between the pylons add to its picturesque looks. This bridge served as the main approach across the river to the original Balmoral Castle, a small 15th-century castle which was reconstructed in the 1830s. When Queen Victoria and Prince Albert bought the Balmoral estate in 1852, they built a new castle, and later commissioned a new bridge. For this, 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 regarded it as 'not extremely ornamental'. 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 It was superseded in 1857 by the Balmoral Bridge, a more solid substitute commissioned by Prince Albert after he and Queen Victoria bought the Balmoral estate in 1852, and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/769279

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap