Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands

Date 2007

Event ID 962717

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/962717

Fleet Mound

(Institute Civil Engineers Historic Engineering Works no. HEW 0132)

In 1813 Telford, who for ten years had been directing a major improvement of the road network in the Highlands, was looking for the means of superseding the inconvenient Little Ferry of the Water of Fleet on the great road from Edinburgh to Thurso. He developed a scheme first projected by local landowner Earl Gower, from 1803 the Marquis of Stafford, for an embankment across the estuary about 3 miles upstream.

The Mound, designed and constructed under Telford’s general direction, and implemented by Earl Gower and others as contractors, was almost 1000 yards long, 60 yards wide at the base and 23 ft high. It was built from 1813–16 at a cost of £9290, and was a precursor of Telford’s 1300 yards Stanley Embankment of 1823–24 on the London to Holyhead Road.

A unique feature of this project, supported financially by the Marquis of Stafford, was the incorporation of a land reclamation facility at its north end where the Fleet was crossed by the new road bridge, 15 ft wide within parapets, of four arches of 12 ft span, increased to six in 1834. Two timber tidal flap-gates were fitted at the sea face of each arch below the springings which, by preventing sea water from passing upstream at high tide and allowing the river to flow out to sea at low tide, enabled about 400 acres of land to be reclaimed.

At times when the river was in flood, the flap-gates were unable to pass sufficient water out to sea at low tide and a mechanism involving brackets, pulleys, chains and hand operated winches was devised and installed to lift the flap-gates manually when necessary. Since 1834 the system has been operated by two winches each located within a purpose-built house at each end of the bridge and operating three flap-gates.

In 2004 the system was modernised. One winch was donated to Dornoch Museum and the other to the Institution of Civil Engineers Museum at Heriot-Watt University where, respectively, they are displayed and interpreted.

R Paxton and J Shipway, 2007.

Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands' with kind permission from Thomas Telford Publishers.