Oblique aerial view centred on the Falkirk Wheel with the aqueduct adjacent, taken from the NW.

Description Oblique aerial view centred on the Falkirk Wheel with the aqueduct adjacent, taken from the NW.

Date 5/2/2002

Collection RCAHMS Aerial Photography

Catalogue Number E 11461 CN

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 798910, SC 1669515

Scope and Content Aerial view, The Falkirk Wheel, Falkirk, from north-west This aerial view from the north-west shows the Falkirk Wheel (centre) being built. It is almost complete but the lock and rectangular jetty are not finished. Once completed, boats travelling from the Forth & Clyde Canal (left) would move into the basin (centre) via the lock. They would manoeuvre onto the caisson and the wheel would rotate moving the caisson from the basin up to the aqueduct. The boat could then move off the caisson, across the aqueduct and gain access to the Union Canal via a tunnel under the Antonine Wall (right). This process would be repeated in the opposite direction for boats travelling from the Union Canal. The semicircular, wedge-shaped building beside the basin is the visitor centre which includes an information point, café and shop. Short boat trips enable visitors to go up and down the wheel and through the tunnel. The aqueduct beside the wheel is 100m-long and has five piers which are 20m apart. 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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