Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands
Date 2007
Event ID 934210
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/934210
White Bridge
(Institute Civil Engineers Historic Engineering Works no. HEW 2539/02)
This bridge, 9 miles north-east of Fort Augustus over the Fechlin and sometimes known as ‘9-mile bridge’, was constructed in 1732 on Wade’s later Great Glen road. It carried the road connecting the military garrisons at Inverness and Fort Augustus on a single tall semicircular arch of 40 ft span, founded on rock outcrops. Unlike most Highland bridges the arch-ring is of squared masonry with a decorative keystone and a string course
projects through the spandrels and follows the line of the roadway. The spandrels are of rubble masonry. Major William Caulfeild, road surveyor under Wade, probably supervised the work of construction.
The bridge has now been bypassed [see NH41NE 24]. The nearby Whitebridge Hotel is built on the site of a former King’s house used by the officers superintending road-making.
R Paxton and J Shipway, 2007.
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands' with kind permission from Thomas Telford Publishers.
