Moira McPartlin writes:
In May 2021, as lockdown restrictions were lifting, my husband Colin Baird and I drove our campervan to Killin at the edge of Stirlingshire (our local authority area). We parked in what was once a station yard and walked the cycle path to the pub where we could at last enjoy a decent pint (albeit sitting outdoors). The path crossed the Dochart Viaduct, the second mass concrete viaduct built in Scotland, according to a Historic Scotland sign
‘What’s mass concrete?’ I asked. Colin, a retired civil engineer, was used to my engineering ignorance.
‘It’s concrete without reinforcement, just cement, water and aggregate.’
I googled the bridge’s engineer, John Strain. His wife was Victorian novelist E.H Strain and friend to Robert Louis Stevenson. As we sipped our IPA Colin explained the construction process, and told me that the Glenfinnan Viaduct was mass concrete, as were others on the West Highland line.
‘We could do a project on mass concrete. You take the photos, I’ll write stories and poems, document our journey.’
We thought there might be a dozen; we found twenty significant bridges built between 1880 and 1904, including two in Greater Glasgow.
I wanted the project to be more than a book about concrete; what about the navvies, the crofters, the flora and fauna of the areas, the women who are invisible in history books? Colin captured the images while I chronicled our site visits; the hard-to-reach bridges, battles through high bracken, scrambles down steep gorges. We scoured archive newspapers to uncover stories of ordinary folk, trying to understand the Victorian values and norms. I began to draw parallels between then and now: trouble with Russia, war in Afghanistan, land ownership in Scotland. The history books were sketchy, so I used fiction to fill the gaps. What began as simple pub chat became a two-hundred-page book.
Many of the stories and poems have been published in literary magazines and anthologies. I spent two years trying to find a traditional publisher for the whole book and although interest was high, publishers felt it was just too big and too expensive to take on. Colin and I employed the services of an editor and designer, and we have now published A Thing So Delicate through our own imprint, Trilleachan Press.
A Thing So Delicate: The Hidden Voices of Scotland’s Mass Concrete Viaducts will be launched in August in Stirling and Glasgow:
26th August 6–7pm, Stirling Central Library, 3 Corn Exchange Rd, Stirling FK8 2HX
27th August, 6.30–8pm, The Alchemy Experiment, 157 Byres Rd, Glasgow G12 8TS
For details contact Moira at moira.mcpartlin@gmail.com
Books available to preorder here.
‘A thing so delicate that the fairies might have built it.’
JJ Bell, of the Glenfinnan Viaduct
‘This is a book that is without doubt greater than the sum of its parts.’
Undiscovered Scotland