OPINION: Inverness bridge still going strong even if it is now misnamed
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It’s never been the colour which it takes its name from, but its original version was a key asset in the growth of Inverness, and last Friday was the 125th anniversary of its opening.
Mrs MacBean, wife of Provost William MacBean, performed the inaugural ceremony as the five-span grey-blue lattice-girder Waterloo Bridge, standing on iron columns and fashioned by the Rose Street Foundry, came into service.
It replaced the wooden crossing which had stood for almost 90 years and was known as the Black Bridge, its name deriving from the staining of its timber.
And the name of its predecessor is still used to describe the “new” 1896 bridge by Invernessians today.
The original crossing was actually a toll bridge, and it proved its hardiness in the great Inverness flood of 1849, when it was fiercely struck by the remains of an iron bridge swept from the Ness Islands and surging downriver.
Despite most of Merkinch being already flooded at the time of impact, the Black Bridge stayed upright and usable while repairs were undertaken.
They make their road bridges hardy down Merkinch way!
It was canal builder Thomas Telford who wrote to the council alerting them to the eventual deterioration of the wooden bridge, urging an iron replacement. Work on the new bridge began in March 1895 and was completed 11 months later. John Mackenzie was the council engineer while Murdoch Paterson, chief engineer for the Highland Railway and former business partner of rail pioneer Joseph Mitchell, was the consulting engineer for the project.
Paterson, from Dell of Inshes and an Inverness Royal Academy pupil, had built stations at Culloden Moor, Daviot, Moy and Tomatin in the previous three years.
Tribute to the iron bridge’s design and strength would come just over a century later, February 1989, when the nearby Waterloo railway bridge was swept away in floods. Police, concerned for the safety of the gas mains running underneath the Black Bridge, ordered the crossing closed, but the bridge itself stood firm and reopened the following day.
All the locomotives for the routes to Ross-shire, Sutherland and Caithness happened to be in the Inverness depot – on the “wrong” side of the ruined rail bridge and the Black Bridge came to the rescue when a locomotive was loaded on to a flatbed truck and driven across it, so it could be set on rail lines and begin a limited northern service.
The new bright orange railway bridge did not open until April 1990 so, until then, the Black Bridge was busier than ever.
The wooden version’s opening in 1808 was only three years after the Battle of Waterloo.
Two years earlier, the council had constructed Telford Street, connecting Merkinch with the burgh’s western flank, so the bridge from Grant Street to Waterloo Place made further strategic sense.
James Grant of Bught, was the provost who pushed for the bridge work to start, with the fact that it suited his hemp and thread manufacturing businesses in Merkinch surely far from his mind.
At the time Inverness had only one other river crossing, the stone bridge close to the line of the present Ness Bridge. Merkinch was pasture land and a small seaside village, but once the Black Bridge was operational, it became part of Inverness.
By 1811, the burgh’s population had risen to 10,750 – a sharp leap from 7000 folk in 1791. Thus, this year is the 210th anniversary of Inverness having a five-figure populace.
n Sponsored by Ness Castle Lodges.
