Isambard Kingdom Brunel: British Engineer

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There’s something very appetizing about sitting down to lunch on the sun terrace of Bristol’s Avon Gorge Hotel, viewing the panoramic, tree-clad vista of the gorge crossed by the 702-foot sweep of the world-famous Clifton Suspension Bridge designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the early 1800s. Originally designed to carry Victorian pedestrians and carriages from the city’s elegant Clifton quarter out to Leigh Woods, the span was so ingeniously constructed that today it can still cope with around 4 million cars a year, and it’s fascinating to watch them beetling along 245 feet above the River Avon.

On April 8, 2006, the eve of the 200th anniversary of Brunel’s birth, newly designed illuminations of the Clifton bridge were ceremoniously switched on to highlight the span’s elegant wrought-iron structure — and to herald the start of a season of celebration for Brunel — one of England’s greatest engineers. Bristol, also home to Brunel’s Temple Meads Station and the SS Great Britain, is a showcase for the engineer’s wide-ranging talents, and his bridge — ‘My first love, my darling’ — is a good place to begin reflecting on the career of this extraordinary man.

Brunel became the Clifton bridge designer in 1830, when he won a competition at age 24 and was appointed project engineer — his first major commission. Because of political and financial difficulties, the project was interrupted and abandoned, however, and Brunel died before the bridge was completed. It was finally finished and opened in 1864, five years after the engineer’s death, but a lasting memorial to his life.

‘Like all his work, it’s beautiful and functional because [Brunel] was an artist as well as an engineer,’ says director of the Brunel 200 celebrations Andrew Kelly. ‘Kenneth Clark wrote in his book Civilisation that Brunel remained all his life in love with the impossible and that’s very apt.’

In fact, Brunel’s brilliance was his capacity to turn the apparently impossible into reality. During his meteoric career (he was just 53 when he died), he embraced civil, structural, mechanical and marine engineering, as well as architecture, art and design, displaying a remarkable breadth of intellect. And in an age when engineers were heroes, he was feted alongside fellow pioneers like George Stephenson, who developed the steam locomotive, and Stephenson’s son Robert, also an engineer. They were, after all, literally building the modern world spawned by the Industrial Revolution.

Brunel was born in Portsea, Portsmouth, on April 9, 1806 — incidentally, the same year as John Augustus Roebling of Brooklyn Bridge (and other) fame. His father Marc, a French royalist, had fled France in 1793 during the Reign of Terror and worked as chief engineer of the port of New York before going to England in 1799. Among his many accomplishments, Sir Marc (he was knighted in 1841) built the Thames Tunnel between Rotherhithe and Wapping, the first tunnel under a navigable river and still used by some 14 million train passengers annually.

To Marc’s delight, his youngest child and only son showed a precocious talent for drawing and an early interest in engineering, so he mapped out an education in England and France that would lead him into the profession. By 1827 Isambard was resident engineer on his father’s Thames Tunnel project, but his involvement was cut short the following year when a major flood there drowned six men and left him with leg and internal injuries. He went to Brighton to convalesce.

Two entries in Brunel’s secret diary from around this time reveal much about his character. One recalls the terrifying flood, yet in terms that exhibit a fascination with its powerful drama to the exclusion of his personal safety: ‘The effect was — grand — the roar of the rushing water in a confined passage, and by its velocity rushing past the opening was grand, very grand….The sight and the whole affair was well worth the risk.’ Another shows his burning ambition to be rich and ‘the first engineer and an example for future ones.’

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Tags: British Heritage, Historical Figures, Science & Engineering

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