South-West England marks the 200th anniversary of one of the giants of the Victorian era: Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Many of his achievements can still be seen, plus there are exciting events planned from spring onwards, as Brian Pedley discovers…
From the River Tamar`s eastern banks at Plymouth, came the rumble of carriages. Soon, the London to Penzance express was inching itself snakelike into the graceful sweep of the Royal Albert Bridge. For almost 150 years, the Great Western Railway has crossed here into Cornwall, 100 feet above the estuary at Saltash.
With its two 1100 ton iron trusses, supported by a 35-foot wide central pier, the bridge spans 1041 feet of river. Completed in 1859, no other bridge on earth had ever straddled such a phenomenal distance. Proudly bearing the name of its creator, I. K. Brunel, the Royal Albert Bridge is acclaimed as a masterpiece.
Born in Portsmouth on 9 April, 1806, Brunel was variously a civil, structural and marine engineer, architect, artist, designer, innovator, entrepreneur and visionary. His projects survive as spectacular legacies to Britain and to the world. This year sees Brunel 200, a £1m programme of exhibitions, festivals, re-enactments, parties and processions.
On platform one at London’s Paddington Station, I found the top-hatted, bronze effigy of the engineer, sitting as if to admire his handiwork. Brunel was part of the team that created this spectacular, glass-roofed terminus. From here, trains continue to run, through Swindon and Bristol – a great way to reach the scenic splendours of South-West England and Wales – on railways built by Brunel.
At the Didcot Railway Centre in Oxfordshire, the preservation charity, the Great Western Society, has recreated a section of the original broad gauge track that carried the GWR – “God`s Wonderful Railway”. Throughout the summer, the replica Fire Fly steam locomotive and train puffs along the line to deliver the ultimate Brunel experience.
Brunel intended his Great Western Railway to be the greatest in the world, with the former rural backwater of Swindon as its hub. Here, he created a “railway village” to house the workers who repaired and maintained the GWR`s rolling stock. This atmospheric warren of yellow “back to back” Cotswold stone cottages survives almost in its entirety. Opened in 1843, Swindon Works was building its own locomotives within three years. By the early 1900s, the site formed one of the largest workshops of its kind in the world, covering 326 acres and employing 14,000 people, building two engines a week and more than 250 carriages a year.
Closed in 1986, Swindon Works is now home to STEAM, the Museum of the Great Western Railway. Regaled by the simulated sounds of hissing pistons and hammers on rivets, the diminutive, life-sized waxwork figure of Brunel stands among the locomotives like a character from the Wild West, with stovepipe hat, big cigar, frock coat and dusty boots. We learn how Brunel, appointed as engineer to the GWR in 1833, travelled on horseback, surveying and planning a line from London to Bristol that would keep steep gradients to a minimum so that trains could operate at high speeds. When it opened it 1841, passengers found the line so comfortably flat, they called it “Brunel`s Billiard Table”. Swindon plans a four-day festival in September that will form the finale of Brunel 200.
Forty miles further west, the regional centre of Bristol is also gearing up to celebrate the “little giant”. On Brunel’s 200th birthday weekend in April, the city will reverberate to fireworks and music. Exhibitions, tours and other events follow throughout the summer, here and all over the South-West.
Brunel’s accomplishments dominate the very fabric of the city. Alongside the modern Bristol Temple Meads railway station, the world’s oldest surviving purpose-built railway terminus has
been restored to its Victorian grandeur, with former platforms bedecked with lines of iron columns that soar ornately to the world’s largest single span hammer beam roof. Now part of the British Empire & Commonwealth Museum, the terminus, with its gothic frontage, was built as a viaduct above a system of cavernous arched vaults that were used for stabling and storage. From April, for the first time, the complex will be opened for guided tours.
Brunel’s dream was for passengers to buy a ticket at London Paddington that would take them to Bristol – and then to New York by ship. At Bristol Docks in 1843, the irrepressible engineer launched another of his masterpieces, the world`s first ocean-going liner, SS Great Britain. Now, in the same docks, the 320 foot, six-masted steamship is one of the most compelling of England's West Country attractions. Rescued as an abandoned hulk in the 1970s, the ship has recently been re-restored to ensure her future survival against corrosion. Now, visitors can descend into a phenomenal glass-roofed `sea` to explore the great ship beneath her waterline, with her mighty propeller, while dehumidifiers filter the air to desert dryness.
A mile or so down river, I watched another of his creations rising from the mists of the Avon Gorge. At the age of 24, he beat some of Britain’s most eminent engineers to submit the winning design for the 702-foot long Clifton Suspension Bridge. With its twin, 86-foot high Egyptian-style piers that stab the sky above the suburb of Clifton, the bridge remains Bristol’s defining landmark. Initially, the project had to be abandoned because of a shortage of funds. Sadly, Brunel never lived to see the Clifton Bridge finally completed in 1864. Nor was he well enough to witness the grand opening of his Royal Albert Bridge on 2 May, 1859. Broken in health, he had to be taken by low carriage to view his masterpiece nearing completion on the Tamar. In the same year, on 15 September, he died, aged 53.
Brunel built more than a thousand miles of railway in England, Wales and Ireland. This year in Britain, ride by train – through tunnels, across valleys, estuaries, beaches and bridges – and remember the cigar-smoking genius who made it all possible.