Thomas Telford was born the son of a shepherd at
Westerkirk, near Langholm, Dumfries-shire in August 1757. He was
responsible for Building hundreds of miles of roads and around
1000 bridges of which Dunkeld is a most magnificent example.
Telford’s Bridge at Dunkeld is one of the greatest civil
engineering feats of the 19th century. The bridge measured 685ft
(over 200m) with seven spans - a central one of 90ft (27.4m),
two of 84ft (25m) two of 74ft (22.5m) and tow land spans of 20ft
(6m). The spandrels (between the arches) are not filled with
rubble stone but with internal longitudinal walls to take the
trust of the arches without overloading the external spandrel
walls. This arrangement was a feature of Telford’s designs and
has contributed to the durability of the bridge.
With no sign of solid rock on the river bed , Telford could not
drive timber piles into the rock, so to solve this problem, the
foundation of the bridge piers were constructed on rafts of
spruce and larch timber 5ft below the river bed.
Previously there were two ferries crossing the mighty Tay, one
upstream from the Cathedral - the Inver Ferry, and the East
Ferry
Downstream of Little Dunkeld Church, but in 1766 six people
drowned when the East Ferry capsized with thirteen passengers
and four horses. The government instructed Thomas Telford to
carry out a survey, and in 1802 he reported that a bridge could
be built a little way above the East Ferry, but the Duke
insisted that the design was moved westward to align with Atholl
Street. Bridge Street was Constructed and an impressive entrance
to Dunkeld was created.
In 1805 after a ceremony held by Sir George Stewart, laird of
the Murthly Estate laid the foundation stone in the Duke of
Atholl’s absence. The Bridge was opened to the public in 1808.
Watch the Atholl Highlanders at the 200th
Anniversary of the opening of Dunkeld Bridge on 28th March 2009
The sandstone for the arches was quarried at Gellyburn on the
Murthly Estate 10km to the SE of Dunkeld and the stone for the
rubblework was quarried just to the west of Birnam.
The 4th Duke of Atholl met half the cost of the bridge
(estimated At £15,000) on the understanding that he could
recover the amount from tolls. The charges for crossing went
from one halfpenny for a person on foot through to twopence for
an unladen horse, fourpence when drawing a cart and eightpence
for a carriage. Sheep and pigs were sixpence per score and
cattle one shilling and eightpence per score. This amounted to
tolls collected of about £750 rising to over £2000 per year in
1863.
The actual cost of construction rose to £34.000 (where have we
heard that before?) The government contributed £7.000 leaving
the Duke to recover £27.000 from tolls. It was hoped that the
bridge would be toll-free within a few years of it’s completion,
but the public became increasingly disgruntled with the tolls
and they protested - resulting in riots at the bridge, because
they thought the Duke was using the money collected from tolls
to fund the building of his new mansion house at Dunkeld. Tolls
were paid until the bridge was taken over by the Country Roads
Authority in 1879.
The
Town Jail was situated under the bridge on the Dunkeld side, you
can still see the door. It must have been a cold damp prison to
locked up in, with the possibility of drowning when the River
Tay flooded.
