Forth Bridge to bid for World Heritage
Status
The
Forth Bridge will be put forward to UNESCO to consider making it a World
Heritage Site.
The
nomination of the engineering icon will be submitted to the World Heritage
Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation (UNESCO) for a decision at the 2015 meeting.
Cabinet
Secretary for Culture and External Affairs Fiona Hyslop said:
“The
Forth Bridge is a Scottish icon that is recognised the world over. We are
extremely excited that we have the opportunity to make the case for the Bridge
being inscribed as Scotland’s sixth World Heritage Site.
“To
have the Bridge inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site would be a tremendous
accolade for the Bridge itself, for the local communities and for Scotland.
This nomination has the potential to be a celebration of our country’s
incredible engineering ingenuity and pedigree and I wish the team working on it
all the best.”
The
nomination will be overseen by the Forth Bridges Forum, which includes
representatives from Historic Scotland, bridge owners Network Rail, Transport
Scotland, the Forth Estuary Transport Authority, Fife Council and City of
Edinburgh Council.
David Simpson, route managing director
for Network Rail Scotland, commented:
“The Forth Bridge is one of the most recognisable bridges anywhere in the world and certainly the most cherished Scottish structure of the Victorian era.
“The bridge has become a source of pride and a symbol of Scotland’s resilience and ingenuity but we must never lose sight of the fact that it is first and foremost a working structure which still carries over 200 trains a day.
“This nomination should be regarded as a further tribute to the thousands of men who have contributed to building, maintaining and restoring the structure over the last 130 years."
If
successful, the rail bridge would be the sixth World Heritage Site in Scotland
– The Heart of Neolithic Orkney, The Antonine Wall (part of the transnational
Frontiers of the Roman Empire WHS), the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh, St
Kilda and New Lanark.
A revised UK Tentative List was announced in March 2011
that included 3 Scottish sites - Mousa, Old Scatness and Jarlshof: the Zenith of Iron Age
Shetland, the Flow Country and the Forth Bridge
The remaining
sites on the Tentative List will be given the opportunity to submit Technical
Evaluations to DCMS in the autumn of 2013, detailing why they are worthy of
designation. This will inform future decisions regarding which sites will be
submitted to UNESCO and when this will be.
The Forth Bridge
is the world’s first large-scale steel cantilever bridge. It is 2.5km
(1.5 miles) long and comprises two girder spans of 521 metre (1,710ft) made up
of three 105 metre (351 ft) high
double-cantilevers, with a long approach viaduct on tall granite-faced piers at
its South end.
Work on the
Bridge was commenced in 1882 and formally completed on March 4, 1890 by HRH
Edward Prince of Wales.
The bridge used
54,000 tonnes of steel and an estimated 6,500,000 rivets. Its total cost
was £3,200, 000 (equivalent to around £235 million today).
The contractor
responsible for building the bridge was the innovative Glasgow engineer,
William Arrol, whose main works were in Dalmarnock and later also
Parkhead. At the same time as building the Forth Bridge, Arrol’s company
also successfully re-built the Tay Bridge and constructed the steel frame of
Tower Bridge in London.
One of the
more unusual people who worked on the construction of the Forth Bridge was
Japanese engineer Kaichi Watanabe, who had studied under the Scottish engineer,
Henry Dyer, in the Faculty of Technology of the University of Tokyo. He
later studied at the University of Glasgow and then worked as a construction
foreman on the Forth Bridge. He is famous for appearing in a photograph
as the central part of a ‘human cantilever’ demonstrating the engineering
principles of the bridge. This photograph can now be seen under the ‘20’
on the Bank of Scotland £20 note.
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