Researched and written by Jeannette Briggs
Photos courtesy CanalGuide staff
The Falkirk Wheel is truly a unique structure. Not only is it the first boat lift of its type anywhere in the world, but it is also a marriage of engineering ingenuity and architectural imagination that combine to form an eyecatching working "sculpture", and a superb tourist attraction in its own right. It is the World's first rotating boat lift, and the first boat lift to be built in Great Britain since the Anderton Lift in Cheshire, which dates from 1875. It is 115 feet high, 115 feet wide and 100 feet long and stands in a huge water basin with mooring for 20 boats.
The Falkirk Wheel is located near the Scottish town of Falkirk in the lowlands of Scotland, about half way between the two cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. At this point the two main canals that traverse the centre of Scotland - the Union Canal and the Forth and Clyde canal - join together, thus enabling boaters to travel across the central plain of Scotland.
Formerly, the junction of these two canals at Falkirk was made possible by a flight of 11 locks, but this flight fell into disrepair and they were closed in 1963. Following the closure of these locks the two canals continued operations as separate entities, and they entered a spiral of decline and abandonment.
It was not until the approach of the Millennium that plans were made to reconnect the two canals and to re-open the through route from Glasgow to Edinburgh, and this became known as the Millennium Link. The prime aim of this was to encourage new canalside development and leisure activities across the whole of Scotland's central area. However, it was acknowledged by the engineers that this concept would have problems from the outset, because the route of the two canals was obstructed in 32 places by infilled bridges or pipelines, and most of the locks, bridges and aqueducts needed some repair work. All this work was taxing enough for the civil engineers, but from the very first it was apparent that the single most difficult problem on the whole Millennium project would be that of re-connecting the two canals at Falkirk. Several ingenious ideas for connecting the canal were proposed and discussed, and these ranged from an overhead monorail with the boats carried beneath, a funicular railway and a giant see-saw.
Gradually, the concept of a turning wheel was developed, and this evolved into the exciting and innovative design that you see today.
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