The Forth Bridge has joined Stonehenge, the Great Pyramids and other famous landmarks as a Unesco World Heritage Site. The 1.5-mile rail bridge with its distinctive three diamond-shaped cantilever arches is one of 29 British sites listed.
The decision was announced today in Bonn, Germany, after lobbying by the Scottish government. UK heritage minister Tracey Crouch said the listing would safeguard the 125-year-old structure for "future generations" and "draw more tourists to the area".
The bridge was designed by Sir John Fowler and Benjamin Baker and is recognised as a high point of Victorian engineering. Construction took eight years, with more than 100 workers dying during the process. It was finished in 1890.
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Unesco's report on the bridge says: "This enormous structure, with its distinctive industrial aesthetic and striking red colour, was conceived and built using advanced civil engineering design principles and construction methods.
"Innovative in design, materials and scale, the Forth Bridge is an extraordinary and impressive milestone in bridge design and construction during the period when railways came to dominate long-distance land travel." For many years, the bridge needed non-stop painting, a fact which entered the popular imagination, with "painting the Forth Bridge" becoming an expression for any endless task. Modern longer-lasting paints have spoiled the metaphor, however.
Situated near Edinburgh, the bridge carries trains across the Firth of Forth between South and North Queensferry. The road bridge alongside was only opened in 1964. Degradation in its suspension cables has forced the construction of a third bridge, due to open in 2016.
Unesco's list of World Heritage sites in the UK includes Durham city centre, the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, Stonehenge, the St Kilda archipelago, the 'Jurassic Coast' in Dorset and Devon and Blenheim Palace. Here's the list in full:
- Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd, north Wales
- Durham Castle and Cathedral
- Giant's Causeway and Causeway Coast, Northern Ireland
- Ironbridge Gorge, Shropshire
- St Kilda, Scotland
- Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites
- Studley Royal Park including the Ruins of Fountains Abbey, North Yorkshire
- Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire
- City of Bath
- Frontiers of the Roman Empire, including Hadrian's Wall
- Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey, including Saint Margaret's Church
- Canterbury Cathedral, St Augustine's Abbey, and St Martin's Church
- Henderson Island
- Tower of London
- Gough and Inaccessible Islands
- Old and New Towns of Edinburgh
- Maritime Greenwich
- Heart of Neolithic Orkney
- Blaenavon Industrial Landscape, south eastern Wales
- Historic Town of St George and Related Fortifications, Bermuda
- Derwent Valley Mills, Derbyshire
- Dorset and East Devon Coast
- New Lanark
- Saltaire, West Yorkshire
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
- Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City
- Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape
- Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal, north east Wales
- The Forth Bridge
