Glasgow Bridge, Forth and Clyde Canal, Swing Bridge View from West Digital image of D/58846/cn

Description Glasgow Bridge, Forth and Clyde Canal, Swing Bridge View from West Digital image of D/58846/cn

Date 29/9/1999

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

Catalogue Number SC 793006

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of D 58846 CN

Scope and Content Replacement bridge, Swing Bridge, Forth & Clyde Canal, Glasgow Bridge, East Dunbartonshire, from west This shows the 'Janet Telford', a barge run by the Forth & Clyde Canal Society, docked in a basin to the west of the bridge. This bridge was engineered by Scott Wilson, Kilpatrick and opened in 1990. It has eight capped piers (four on each side) which have been decorated in an Art Nouveau style with reliefs in patterns of squares and rectangles. Originally, a bascule bridge (drawbridge) spanned the canal at this point but was replaced around 1930 by a swing bridge. The swing bridge was removed in the 1970s and a culvert built. However the Glasgow Canal Project, whose aim was to restore bridges on the Glasgow Branch of the canal, replaced the culvert with this new 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.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/793006

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap