Here’s one for you that I bet you probably never heard of. Did you know that in 1928, a proposal was put forward to make crossing the Firth of Forth by car easier by building a dam across it? This will be a short thread, by nature of the dearth of information available on this bold initiative.

The scheme was the brainchild of Matthew Steele, a Bo’ness-born architect (whose work focused on retail and housing in an Arts & Crafts and later Moderne style and includes the Hippodrome cinema) – and John Jeffrey, a Bo’ness hotelier and burgh councillor.

This was a time before the Kincardine swing bridge was built (completed 1936), and there was much public debate about the best manner and location for a vehicle crossing of the Forth downstream of Stirling.

The 7,300 feet long barrage (1.3 miles, 2.2km) would run from just west of Port Edgar on the south shore to a point a quarter of a mile to the west of North Queensferry, and you’ll be as totally thrilled as I was to know I found a sketch plan! You’ll notice that this wasn’t just a dam, in order to maintain navigation up and down the Forth, it was planned to cut a 2,500ft (762m) long channel between Inverkeithing harbour and St. Margaret’s Bay, complete with locks on the scale of the Panama Canal

This latter point was critical as Rosyth – the Royal Navy Home Fleet’s principal dockyard was upstream of the dam – so it would have to be allow passage by the Fleet’s battleships such as HMS Hood, the 47,000 ton, 860ft long pride of the nation.

It was Steele’s contention that building the foundations of a dam to the west of the Beamer Rock (where the modern Queensferry Crossing finds its footings) would be easier and cheaper than forming the base for a pier. Steele & Jeffrey put forward a number of benefits for their dam:

1. Firstly, it would bring thousands of construction jobs to the out-of-work miners of Bo’ness, Stirlingshire, West Lothian and Fife, many more so than would be required to build a bridge.
2. Secondly, a steel bridge would be built with steel that inevitably came from Lanarkshire and would not directly benefit the Forth coast, and would require specialised steel fabricators rather than the sort of work that would suit the skills of miners.
3. Thirdly, the dam would help the region find a convenient way to dispose of its surplus of ugly and often dangerous coal and shale bings, which would provide the perfect infill material
4. Fourth, and dubiously, they proposed that a new level of the Forth would form a fresh water lake several feet about the natural high tide level thus ridding the estuary of its “hideous black mud-flats”. This, of course, would have been an ecological disaster.
5. The elevated water level of the new Loch Forth would benefit shipbuilding in Bo’ness and Grangemouth it was claimed, as with deeper water they could launch larger ships, and the docks of these towns could support larger vessels without tidal restrictions.
6. The giant new lake, cut off from the roughness of the sea, would be perfect for the landing of seaplanes, and military and civilian bases were proposed. Alan Cobham had sent Leith aviation crazy in June 1928 by arriving in his flying boat.
7. To top off the seemingly endless list of benefits of the Forth Dam, “the water… could be used to create hydro-electric power for all the Forth Valley” and would be a “big inducement in bringing new factories to West Lothian, Stirlingshire and parts of Fife“

The dam would be topped by a roadway, and “fast water buses” were also proposed (although feel somewhat superfluous considering the effort that would have been undertaken to throw a road across the estuary). Jeffrey foresaw “his man made lake becoming a highly popular water playground for the whole of Central Scotland“, proposing it would be akin to the Swiss lakes or the Clyde, and be served by pleasure steamers visiting picturesque new coastal villages.

The pair set about touting their scheme and trying to gain supporters, which started with a letter to the Scotsman on July 7th 1928, and proceeded onto the pages of the West Lothian Courier and Linlithgowshire Gazette. Locally, they found both vocal support and also incredulity. Jeffrey upped the ante – “When is this squandering of public money going to cease?” he demanded in the Gazette in 1930, referring to the “millions” being spent on the Dole rather than his scheme. The proponents got a lukewarm response when they sent it to the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII), whose private secretary politely declined his patronage, saying the Prince couldn’t possibly look into every crackpot scheme that crossed his desk. In stead, the The Prince’s secretary forwarded the scheme on to the Secretary of State for Scotland (Godfrey Collins), from whose intray it never appears to have resurfaced. Within a year or so, it was superseded by serious bridge schemes in the Queensferry area.

The war of course then intervened and the Forth wouldn’t get its downstream road bridge until 1964, but it did gets its car ferries in 1934. You can read more about their amusing habits of running aground in this previous thread. Sixty years later, a smaller scheme, but one that would have been environmentally destructive too, was put forward to infill Wardie Bay between Leith and Granton harbours. You can read more about that over on its own thread.

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