This web site documents and celebrates the project to stabilise and preserve three 18th century bridges on a military road on the Candacraig Estate in Aberdeenshire. The Project was started in the late 1990s under the auspices of Gordon Enterprise Trust (now amalgamated into Enterprise North East Trust) involving several funding partners and advisors, see links & credits. the total cost of the project being about £230,000.

Moving A Bridge

On 15th November 1999, a small but very unusual engineering feat was performed on a centuries old bridge in The Highlands of Scotland. Built under the command of Major William Caulfeild, it had withstood nearly 250 years of floods and the harsh winter weather but slowly the foundations on one bank had been moved nearly one metre downstream, bending the rigid stone structure along its length – and yet it had stood, a tribute to the work of the original builders. The bridge needed to be restored. One might think that this movement would have inevitably destroyed it, but it was not taken down and rebuilt. Instead, Peter Stephen & Partners, the consultant engineers, jacked up the bridge and moved it bodily back into position! (see technical paper).

The bridge is one of three being restored along the line of a road built by the British army in the 18th century. It has been an expensive operation but the historic interest of these bridges lies in more than just their physical structure!

The terrain traversed by the military road,
click to enlarge

Who Passed This Way?

Ancient bridges are portals of history. If, over the centuries, you were able to watch who passed over the bridges or forded the streams close by to where they stand, and see the “tramp of time”, the people would tell you a story. It would be a story of what happened here and in the wider Scotland; stories of historical changes similar to those in many other parts of the world; in distant history and happening today in South America, Asia, Africa and elsewhere. What do these stories tell you about your history?