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People & Personalities / Telford

n 1829, two great engineers from of Anglesey, which carried the new fast road was halted in 1831 amid financial trouble,
two contrasting centuries clashed (which he also engineered) from London to and it was not completed until 1864, after
over the building of one famous the port at Holyhead. When it opened in his death. The project rooted Brunel in the
bridge. The conflict pitted 1826 his edifice over the Menai strait was the city of Bristol, which he soon connected to
Thomas Telford (1757–1834) most elaborate and impressive suspension London with the Great Western Railway.
against Isambard Kingdom Brunel bridge ever built – although not quite the The debacle was, though, almost the end
(1806–59) – the builder of magnifi- first. It boosted Telford’s fame even more. for Telford. Though he continued to work
Icent canals and roads against Yet his bridge-building career ended in until his death just over four years later –
the creator of the revolutionary Great humiliation in Bristol shortly afterwards. after which he was buried in Westminster
Western Railway. Examining entries to the competition for the Abbey, the first engineer to be given that
Though neither knew it at the time, this Avon Gorge bridge – among them designs honour – his time in the front rank of
battle also marked the moment that Telford, drawn up by the young Brunel – Telford engineers was over.
celebrated in his lifetime as Britain’s greatest dismissed them all as inadequate, and was By then, Britain was changing. The
civil engineer, but by that time old, unwell asked, instead, to submit his own entry. Georgian age was giving way to the
and out of his depth, began to be pushed This could have resulted in the finest Victorian, just as horsepower was being
aside in reputation by the 23-year-old Brunel. Telford creation of all. But rather than the pushed aside by steam and canals, and roads
Today the latter is a national hero, the bold and light structure the city had hoped giving way to new railways. Brunel was
embodiment of the can-do Victorian age, for, he proposed three timid, shorter spans, the engineer of the future, Thomas Telford
his best-known photographs showing him held up by mock Gothic towers built from of the past.
standing proud in his tall stovepipe hat. the bottom of the gorge. It was the product Or so it seemed, for well over a century.
Telford, by contrast, is half-forgotten, of an engineering mind that had lost its Today, however, there is fresh recognition of
his name attached to a 1960s new town spark after more than six decades of Telford’s importance to the industrial
in Shropshire but little else. His story relentless work. revolution and the creation of modern
deserves to be rediscovered – and the The design was ridiculed. Brunel, in Britain. It is not to diminish Brunel’s flair
Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol particular, was openly scornful. “As the and success to say that Telford deserves to be
is a good place to start. distance between the opposite rocks was seen as his equal – and, in some ways, as
Few of those who now cross this fine considerably less than what had always been more of a pioneer. Unlike Brunel, for
structure each day realise that it was here considered as within the limits to which instance, who was drilled to learn engineer-
that Brunel took on Telford – and won. It is suspension bridges might be carried,” he ing by his father almost from birth, Telford’s
a spectacular sight, slicing above wooded wrote to the committee after his rejection, youth offered no clear path to greatness.
slopes that tumble down to the water below, “the idea of going to the bottom of such a
and is celebrated as a monument to valley for the purposes of raising at great Evolution of an engineer
Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s brilliance. But expense two intermediate supporters hardly Thomas Telford was born in 1757 on a
the story of its creation is complex. Brunel occurred to me.” remote farm in the hills of the Scottish
depended on others when he drew up his The younger man grabbed his chance. Borders, among a landscape little changed
plans. The bridge was not finished until after A second competition was run in which, today, the gentle beauty of which illuminates
his death, to an altered design. And its initially, Brunel’s design was placed second any exploration of his life. Telford’s father,
engineer was almost Telford – not Brunel. – but with help from his father, the out- a farm labourer, died before his son’s first
standing engineer Marc Brunel, he persuad- birthday, and the young Tammy Telfer – as
Building bridges ed the judges to award him first prize. he was known – was soon set to work guard-
To understand all that happened, you need “Isambard is appointed engineer to the ing sheep on the fellsides.
to rewind beyond the birth of either Clifton Bridge,” Marc wrote triumphantly in He might have remained a poor farm
engineer. In 1754, Bristol wine merchant his diary entry for 19 March 1830. “The most worker all his life, but Telford was driven by
William Vick died, leaving £1,000 in his will gratifying thing,” he noted, was that the a fiery internal energy. He forced himself to
with instructions that it be invested until the defeated engineers included “Mr T…d” – the learn, to read books, and soon even to write
sum reached £10,000. He had believed that only name in the whole of the diary that he poetry. In that he had something in common
this amount would be enough to pay for a could not bring himself to spell out in full, with Scotland’s greatest poet, Rabbie Burns,
much-needed stone bridge from one side of so strong were his feelings. who also started life in a farm in the Borders,
the 75-metre-deep Avon Gorge to the other. Victory was the making of Brunel, though and whom Telford came to venerate.
By 1829 Vick’s legacy, now grown to not quite of the Clifton bridge; construction Most of all, however, Telford wanted to
£8,000, was still unspent. It was clear that build. He trained as a stone mason; among
a stone structure, if it could be built at all, his early tasks, it is said, was carving his
would cost far more than that sum. So the father’s gravestone, which can still be found
city fathers decided to launch a competition Telford deserves in a quiet churchyard near his boyhood
inviting designs for a cheaper iron suspen- to be seen as home; the inscription honours the older
sion bridge, using the latest technology man as an “unblamable shepherd”.
of the day. Brunel’s equal – From that point Telford drove himself
One man stood out as the obvious judge forward and up, always looking for opportu-
for the prize: Thomas Telford, the leading and, in some ways, nities and useful connections. First he went
civil engineer in the land. Not long before, to Edinburgh, then to London, where he
he had overseen the construction of the as more of worked on the building of the grand new
pioneering Menai suspension bridge, Somerset House by the Thames. By the
between mainland north Wales and the isle a pioneer 1780s he was in Shropshire, the county

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