News Release

Castle exhibit for Brunel's Balmoral Bridge sketches

29th March 2006

Original sketches by the iconic engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel for a new bridge over the River Dee at Balmoral are to go on public display for the first time at Balmoral Castle, which opens to visitors for the summer on 1st April.

Brunel was commissioned to design the bridge by Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert, the Royal Family having purchased Balmoral Estate in 1848.

The original 150-year-old Brunel sketches feature in his large Sketchbook No.8, and show two possible designs for the bridge. The first bears a striking resemblance, although on a much smaller scale, to his famous ‘Royal Albert Bridge’ over the River Tamar on the border between Cornwall and Devon (constructed 1852-1859). The second option shown is a wrought iron girder bridge to a design, which was subsequently built. The sketches are dated November 18th 1854 and the bridge was subsequently built between 1856 and 1857. Brunel’s original Sketchbook No.8 has been kindly loaned for the occasion by the University of Bristol Special Collections.

The new display has been arranged to mark the bicentenary of the birth of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and to recognise him as the designer of Balmoral Bridge. The owner of Balmoral Bridge, Aberdeenshire Council, is also to unveil a plaque, presented by the Institution of Civil Engineers, on the bridge later in the year.

Donald Macpherson Aberdeenshire Council’s Principal Engineer, Bridges, said today: “This is an opportunity to recognise and celebrate this bridge as the work of arguably the 19th Century’s most famous engineer.

“The design used the new material wrought iron in an innovative way and provided a very cost effective bridge structure which has stood the test of time, still carrying modern traffic today”.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel is probably best known for his railways and major bridges, which include Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, Hungerford Footbridge in London and culminating in his largest, the Royal Albert Bridge at 2,200 feet long. His vision saw the planning and construction of the Great Western Railway and he designed three ocean crossing steam ships, the SS Great Western, the SS Great Britain and the truly massive SS Great Eastern (completed 1859) which remained the largest ship in the world until the Lusitania was launched in 1906. Even today Isambard Kingdom Brunel is held in high regard, recently being voted second only to Winston Churchill in the BBC’s ‘Greatest Briton’ television series.

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