Oblique aerial view of the Falkirk Wheel, viaduct and lock, taken from the S.

Description Oblique aerial view of the Falkirk Wheel, viaduct and lock, taken from the S.

Date 5/2/2002

Collection RCAHMS Aerial Photography

Catalogue Number E 11458 CN

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 798908, SC 1669512

Scope and Content Aerial view, The Falkirk Wheel, Falkirk, from south-south-east This aerial view from the south-south-east shows the entrance to the tunnel (centre) which runs underneath the Antonine Wall. The tunnel joins the new extension of the Union Canal, not quite completed as shown by machines digging in the channel, to the Falkirk Wheel in the background. A lock connects the circular basin to the Forth & Clyde Canal. This tunnel is the first canal tunnel to have been constructed in Great Britain since the 19th century. It is 160m long, 10m wide and about 15m below the wall and railway line above. Once the tunnel had been cut through the rock and clay it had to be stabilised. This was achieved by lining the walls with steel core mesh which was sprayed with fast-drying concrete. The Forth & Clyde Canal, built between 1768 and 1790, ran from the River Carron, near Falkirk, in the east, to Bowling in the west of Scotland. The Union Canal, built between 1817 and 1822, ran from Port Downie, Falkirk, to Fountainbridge, Edinburgh. Eleven locks which rose 33.5m in a distance of 0.8km connected the two canals. The Union Canal was closed in 1965, two years after the Forth & Clyde Canal, and the locks were largely buried and landscaped in the 20th century. 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. The Falkirk Wheel, opened by Her Majesty The Queen in 2002, was part of this project and re-established the link between the two canals. It was designed and built by a team which included the combined building contractors of Morrison-Bachy-Soletanche with specialist advice from Ove Arup Consultants, Butterley Engineering and R M J M Architects. Constructed on the site of an abandoned opencast mine at a cost £17m, the rotating boat-lift can move boats from one canal to another. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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