The Forth Bridge Above: Blurring the boundaries of art and engineering: the 360ft-high towers of the Forth Bridge stand on granite piers sunk 90ft into the riverbed. Below: A truly great Victorian: Baker was the man behind the Hudson River Tunnel in the U
Described by Ruskin as like ‘painted glass’ that ‘never glows so brightly as when the sun shines through it’, the common poppy is now a powerful symbol of the brevity of life, finds Jack Watkins
by Sir Benjamin Baker and Sir John Fowler
It is beast-like in its strength, to withstand both load pressures and high winds
THE phrase ‘like painting the Forth Bridge’ has become such a commonplace term that it has effectively lost its connection to the magnificent structure that inspired it. When the bridge across the Firth of Forth was opened in 1890 by Edward, Prince of Wales, he declared that it ‘marked the triumph of science and engineering skill over obstacles of no ordinary kind’.
Britain’s first major steel construction, at 1½ miles in length, it was also the world’s longest single-span cantilever bridge, a record it held until the building of the Quebec Bridge in 1917. An emblem of Scottish pride, it has been commended for combining a forthright, unadorned display of its structural elements with a pleasingly elegant outline.
Certainly, viewed from a distance, the Forth Bridge looks as if it is gracefully skipping across the estuary. Yet it is also beast-like in its strength, a necessary requirement to withstand both load pressures and the East
Coast’s high winds, which had been instrumental in the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879.
Ferries had been used to cross the Forth for centuries, but it was only with the advancement in manufacturing and engineering standards in the 19th century that a bridge became a possibility. The demand for a continuous rail link along the coast had seen railway engineer Thomas Bouch commissioned to construct bridges across both the Tay and the Forth.
The Tay Bridge opened in 1878, but, during a heavy winter storm the following year, a portion of it collapsed at the moment a train was crossing it, with at least 60 people on board perishing. Inadequate bracing of the pier ironwork was found to be one of the causes and Bouch’s work on a suspension bridge for the Forth was abandoned.
It was at this point that the London-based partnership of Sir John Fowler and Benjamin Baker presented their idea for a cantilever bridge. Baker had written a book, LongSpan Railway Bridges, in 1867. He argued that cantilever bridges, built using steel, still in its infancy as a construction material, instead of iron, were the strongest and simplest to design and construct.
With Baker meticulously scrutinising almost every aspect of its creation, the Forth Bridge project was the first to make major
use of the scientific testing of wind loads, and the effects of weathering on its components. Above the granite-pier foundations, sunk 90ft into the riverbed, the superstructure was formed of three 360ft-high, double-cantilever towers, with cantilevered arms to each side. The entire structure was given further bracing by intricate lattice girders and struts.
Although it was over-engineered to give travellers confidence, there was a human cost
Although the bridge was over-engineered to give travellers confidence in its safety after the tragedy of the Tay Bridge, there was, unfortunately, a human cost. Boats were at hand in the Forth to rescue workmen, but, often required to climb great heights in hazardous weather conditions, many fell to their deaths or were crushed. At the project’s peak, 4,600 workers were employed; although the official tally for fatalities was 57, it is believed that the real figure was higher. Many more workers were seriously injured.
Even so, the Forth Bridge quickly became a tourist attraction, despite its near continual maintenance requirements. Its exposed location necessitated regular repainting, although, in 2011, after an extensive repaint, Network Rail announced it would not need another one for 20 years.
Remarkably, the Forth Bridge still carries 200 trains a day and remains essentially unchanged from 1890. Some now refer to it as the Forth Rail Brigade, after it was joined by the Forth Road Bridge, which opened in 1964, and the Queensferry Crossing, in 2017. These are two remarkable feats of engineering in their own right, but it’s the old red bridge that is reckoned to be the masterpiece. In 2015, UNESCO added it to its list of World Heritage Sites.
Jack Watkins
JOHN MCCRAE was a physician who, after enlisting with the First Brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery in 1914, became the first of his countrymen to be made a consulting surgeon of the British Army. Within a year, he was tending the wounded of the second Battle of Ypres. Inspired by the makeshift grave of a friend killed in the fighting, he wrote a poem that began with the simple lines: In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses row on row.
Reflecting the poignant spectacle of the crosses set above the massed burials, with hundreds of poppies already shooting up among them, In Flanders Fields was published anonymously in Punch magazine. Before long, the verse had so caught the public imagination that the common poppy became the adopted Flower of Remembrance for the British and Commonwealth war dead—and has remained so to this day.
Yet, somewhat ironically, the poppy is an invasive plant species, an interloper within the ranks of Britain’s historic flora. The Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland includes common poppies within its list of archaeophytes, that is non-native (alien) taxa introduced by humans, either intentionally or unintentionally, and which became naturalised between the start of the Neolithic period and 1500AD. The common poppy is thought to have first arrived as seeds within the corn-crop imports of Iron Age farmers 5,000 years ago, possibly from the eastern Mediterranean area.
Poppy seeds germinate on disturbed soil, typically after ploughing or tilling, which is why it thrived on the battlefields of the Western Front, where the terrain was scarred by shells and thousands of marching feet. Thus it came to be included within a group of plants, including charlock, cornflower and knapweed, associated with our arable landscapes. The agricultural association predates the poppy’s arrival on these shores, however. The Assyrians called poppies ‘the daughters of the field’ and the Romans depicted their goddess of corn, Ceres, wearing a wreath
The Assyrians called poppies “the daughters of the field” and Roman goddess Ceres wore a wreath of them
of wheat stalks and common poppies. Its Latin name, Papaver rhoeas, was given to it by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753.
It was two British writers in the 19th century who hymned the plant’s distinctive aesthetic. In Proserpina, his study of wayside flora, John Ruskin described it as ‘the most transparent and delicate of all the blossoms of the field’. To him, the poppy petal was like ‘painted glass’ that ‘never glows so brightly as when the sun shines through it’.
Rather less recalled today is the former Daily Telegraph theatre critic Clement Scott, whose rapturous columns about Poppyland in the 1880s enjoyed a large and receptive following in their day. It was at about this time that the north Norfolk coast was beginning to be discovered, with a new railway line attracting tourists to places such as Cromer, where Scott was enchanted by the seas of bobbing poppies he found in the fields by the cliff paths. He wrote in The Garden of Sleep: Neath the blue of sky, in the green of the corn, It is there that the regal red poppies are born! Brief days of desire, and long dreams of delight, They are mine when Poppy-land cometh in sight
Rank doggerel this may have been, but, before long, the Great Eastern Railway had renamed the local rail track the Poppy Line in response to the numbers who were inspired to visit the area after reading Scott’s words. Today, the common poppy is the county flower of Norfolk (as it is of Essex), having been chosen by the public in a 2002 Plantlife survey.
Monet liked to paint poppies, as did van Gogh. Perhaps the appeal of the poppy to writers and artists, apart from its numbers and tenacity, is its association with both the brevity of life and renewal. The poppy flower sheds its petals after a single day, but a healthy plant will produce more than 400 flowers in succession throughout the summer (it can be seen in bloom from June to September, sometimes as early as May and into October). The plant itself can take on quite a bushy, upright form that stands more than 2ft tall.
Although the wanderer may thrill to the spectacle of what seem like flickering cloaks of crimson thrown across a field, arable farmers are less enthusiastic, as only a few established poppies can have a costly effect on crop yields. Small wonder then that, armed with efficient new herbicides in the unsentimental agricultural environment of the second half of the 20th century, poppies were, as Richard Mabey has written, ‘sprayed almost into oblivion’. If they have made any sort of comeback in the farmed landscapes of the 21st century, it has been within the wildflower mixes sown by those desperate to adopt green credentials.
Nonetheless, poppies could yet have the last laugh. They produce 15,000–20,000 seeds per plant, which, thanks to hard outer capsules, can survive for almost a century deep in the soil, waiting for the moment to send up shoots when conditions are favourable once more. If the Government, freed from the constraints of the EU’S Nature-unfriendly Common Agricultural Policy, was to truly live up to its promise to invigorate a more environmentally supportive approach to farming, might we yet see a return to the
blissful days of Poppyland?
Poppies produce 15,000–20,000 seeds each, which can survive for almost a century
Know your poppies
Don’t take it for granted that, when you see a poppy, it’s always the common species, as there are several varieties
Common poppy (Papaver rhoeas)
The poppy of the Flanders battlefields, arable fields, hedge banks and roadsides, with a hairless, flat-topped seed pod and right-angled hairs on stems
Long-headed poppy (Papaver dubium; above left)
Paler, smaller flower than the common, with a long and narrow seed capsule. The most common poppy in the North of England Prickly poppy (Papaver argemone; above middle)
Smaller and rarer than the common one, it likes sandy soils and has long, narrow seedheads that are covered in bristles, with a black spot at the base of each petal Rough poppy (Papaver hybridum; above right)
The rarest of the poppies, with small red petals that carry a black spot at the base. Its seed capsule is globe-shaped and covered in stiff yellow bristles
Opium poppy (Papaver somniferum;
below left)
Has large lilac flowers with a purple blush at the centre. Once cultivated in the UK, but those seen in the wild today are usually garden or field escapees Yellow-horned poppy (Glaucium flavum; below middle)
Easily spotted at shingly seaside locations, with big yellow flowers and waxy leaves. Grows up to 3ft. Can also grow on sand and clifftops
Welsh poppy (Meconopsis cambrica;
below right)
Yellow-flowered plant of damp, shaded woods, hedges and rocky places in Wales and South-west England. First identified by Carl Linnaeus in Wales, hence its name