Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders
Date 2007
Event ID 609936
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/609936
Bannockburn Bridge, which carries the A9 road 40 ft over the Bannock Burn about two miles south-east of Stirling, has a span of 24 ft and is of unusual character. According to Southey it was designed by Telford, whose solution for preventing inward earth-pressure movement of the tall abutments by means of curved masonry struts is almost playful, but nevertheless effective. The iron beam above the top arch formed part of a later roadway widening to its present 38 ft between parapets.
The bridge was being built when it was visited by Telford and Southey in 1819. Southey wrote, ‘Thro’ Falkirk we passed under [the Forth & Clyde Canal at Camelon] by an arch so dangerously low that it might easily prove fatal to a traveller on the outside of a stage coach. A new road is making near Stirling [at Bannockburn] with a bridge which is one of Mr Telford’s works and has a huge circle over the single arch . . . the appearance is singular and striking.’
The Camelon underpass referred to by Southey and shown on Smeaton’s drawing as 16 ft wide by 11 ft high
with 2 ft arch rise was briefly revealed during a lock extension for the Millennium Link Canal Regeneration
(see Paxton and Shipway, 2007, 324). It served for at least four decades before being replaced, first by a bascule bridge and later by a swing bridge.
R Paxton and J Shipway 2007
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission from Thomas Telford Publishers.
