Bo'ness - Jewel in the Crown of Falkirk

During the work starved pre-war years of the early 1930's there was a proposal put forward by John Jeffrey (a Bo'ness hotel owner) and Mathew Steel to dam the Forth at Queensferry. Mathew Steele was the architect responsible for the design of the Hippodrome Cinema, Masonic Lodge and No. 11 South Street (Now S&J Studios) was designed by Mathew Steel for John Paris.

At the time this would have: - employed thousands of labourers; given Bo'ness Harbour a new lease of life, since shipping could leave and enter at any time; encouraged shipbuilding at Grangemouth; created a semi-tidal waterway in Britain, larger than Loch Lomond, and which could rival any Swiss lake for amenities; produced hydro-electric power for use in all Forth Valley towns; be used as a landing facility for sea-planes which were being considered for commercial flights at that time. Alas when war broke out all thoughts of this proposal were forgotten.

Today things are entirely different and this idea is utterly absurd, yet is it?

Anyone commuting out of Edinburgh by car, and particularly those needing to cross the Forth will be all too aware of the problems with congestion and high winds effecting traffic crossing the Forth Road Bridge. This also has a knock on effect on the Kincardine Bridge, which has enormous traffic problems every time the Forth Road Bridge is closed, or partially closed, because of accidents, weather or ever increasingly due to bridge works.

To many the idea of a dam across the Forth is fanciful to say the least, but many of the benefits that Jeffrey and Steel anticipated are even more appropriate today.

Imagine a tidal dam across the Forth at Queensferry topped with six lanes available for traffic, which would only require a bridge to have a central span to give sufficient height and breadth to let through shipping. Weather would therefore have little effected, and the artificial semi-tidal loch created would have a tremendously positive effect on the tourist trade for all the coastal towns on the Forth, from South Queensferry to Stirling; breathing new life into Bo'ness, Alloa, Charlestown, Rosyth, Blackness to name less than half. Recreational watersports such as sailing, canoeing, wind surfing and boating would all boom since on semi-tidal waters they would be safer and accessible at all times; over-wintering boats would also be much less of a problem and less costly. As an added advantage hydroelectric power could be fed to the national grid and produce some revenue. Since the river would still be semi-tidal there would be little detrimental effect to the mud flats, bird and sealife populations. For the most part the dam could be in-filled with compacted ash or shale, from the hideous looking red shale bings seen from both the M8 and M9.

Neither is the project too ambitious; the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River, Washington State, USA has a crest length of 4,173ft, is 550ft high and the volume of concrete poured was a massive 8,092,000 m³.

Too ambitious? At Cridling Stubbs, N.Yorkshire the National Power's Gale Common Tailing Dam has put in place 15,000,000 m³ of compacted ash, or almost twice that of the Grand Coulee Dam aforementioned.