Section:GDN 1N PaGe:3 Edition Date:190808 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 7/8/2019 18:57 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
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Thursday 8 August 2019 The Guardian
Engineering
Shimmers
like a spider’s
web in the dew
Oliver WainwrightA
slender carpet of slate
hangs above a rocky
ravine on the north
coast of Cornwall,
where azure waters
lap at the entrance
to Merlin’s Cave , reconnecting the
mainland to the ruins of Tintagel
Castle for the fi rst time in centuries.
Its modern-day Merlins are
Laurent Ney , a Belgian architect and
engineer, and William Matthews ,
lead designer of the Shard in London
under Renzo Piano. They teamed
up to summon this £5m footbridge
into being for English Heritage. “It
was the fi rst time in my life that I
had to design a bridge in a site that
was totally inaccessible – and which
was expected to disappear into the
landscape,” says Ney.
The rugged promontory provided
the perfect place for the Cornish
kings to build their fortifi ed
stronghold in the fi fth and sixth
centuries , when the headland was
connected by a narrow isthmus
that has since crumbled into the
sea. The ends-of-the-earth feeling
also helped to fuel all the legends
that have swirled around the site
since the Middle Ages, when it was
named as the place of King Arthur’s
conception, prompting Richard Earl
of Cornwall to build his castle there
in the 13th century.
This made it a tricky place to
bring 50 tonnes of steel and 40,
slate tiles to – all of which had to be
delivered by helicopter in fi ve-tonne
prefabricated chunks and assembled
by a crane on a cable stretching right
across the gulch.
The result is a miraculously
slight construction, with polished
steel balustrades and diagonal
braces that, from a distance, make
it shimmer like a spider’s web in
the dew. As you get closer, it reveals
itself to be two structures, each
cantilevered out from the cliff s – like
a pair of opposing diving boards.
Tourists, tickets in hand, will
be able to fl ow across the bridge’s
elegant 70 metre deck of local slate
tiles, which have been packed
together on their sides without
mortar, creating the eff ect of walking
across a box of After Eight mints.
There is a slight rattle as you
traverse this mineral mat, and a
subtle bounce created by fellow
walkers, both of which add a frisson
to crossing the 2.5-metre-wide deck
60 metres above the sea. There are
nice details – thin slices of quartz
embedded in the trays of slate as
well as raw oak handrails – giving it
a hand-crafted quality in tune with
the historic setting, and making it
unlike most modern technocratic
footbridges.▼ The 68-metre bridge, co-designed
by the lead architect of the Shard,
joins the two parts of the castle
PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID LEVENE/THE GUARDIANMark Brown,
Arts correspondent
After more than six centuries, and a
more recent bill of £5m, a footbridge
to the dramatic, wind-battered head-
land at the heart of the Arthurian
legend will fi nally open to the public
this weekend.
The bridge, one of the most ambi-
tious, complicated and at times
controversial heritage projects in Brit-
ain in recent years, will, says English
Heritage , restore the lost crossing of
Tintagel Castle, in north Cornwall.
It means visitors will no longer have
to climb 148 narrow, steep and often
crowded steps to get around the popu-
lar tourist site. Instead, they will cross
a 68m -long bridge over a spectacular
rocky chasm that separates two halves
of the ruins of the 13th century castle.
Visitors will walk across the bridge’s
unusual surface of 40,000 locally
sourced slate tiles, stacked vertically
in stainless steel trays. At the centre is
a 4cm gap that will increase in the cold
and decrease in the heat. It is, design-
ers say, safe.
“For it to almost close it would have
to be 50C for two weeks,” said the co-
designer William Matthews. “We have
designed for extreme temperatures.”
He said people would make what-
ever they wanted of the gap. It could
be a poetic symbol of stepping from the
past to the present, reality to legend, or
it could just be the engineering reality
of a cantilever bridge. “It’s fun – and
what is wrong with that?”
Tintagel – the Cornish Din Tagell
mean s “the fortress of the narrow
entrance” – is steeped in myth and
legend.
The most evocative is the story of
how an ancient king, the lust-crazed
Uther Pendragon , used the crossing
to spend the night with Ygerna , wife of
one of his barons, Gorlois of Cornwall,
during which they conceived Arthur.
Ygerna thought Uther was her true
husband but it was a trick – Uther
had been transformed by the wizard
Merlin.
Th e mythical castle may never
have existed, but the stories soon Sunday. However, some have
accused English Heritage of try-
ing to “Disneyfy” the site , with the
bridge joining two artworks – a carv-
ing of Merlin’s head in the cove and
an Arthurian sculpture titled Gallos
on the headland.
Georgia Butters, head of historic
properties in Cornwall, denies the
charge: “ Disney is essentially about
making money. What we are trying
to do is get people to care about our
heritage. We want people to really
engage with their heritage because if
you don’t care, and you don’t engage,
who is going to look after this in 100
years’ time? ”
The bridge is also late, with the
castle due to close in October for the
winter. Butters admits English Herit-
age would not have chosen to open in
the mid st of the summer season.
But the scheme has been com-
plicated, with the lack of vehicular
access meaning helicopters had to be
used to bring in hundreds of tonnes
of materials. Cable cranes normally
used in the Swiss Alps were employed
to move sections of bridge into place.
The bridge and a wider landscaping
project have been made possible by a
£2.5m donation from Julia and Hans
Rausing, the biggest private donation
the charity has ever received.
English Heritage now expects an
increase in visitor s to Tintagel and
has introduced timed ticketing. And
should anyone miss the steps, they can
still be used.
Matthews, who for 12 years led
the design team for the Shard, hopes
visitors will enjoy the bridge, designed
together with Ney & Partner engineers
in Belgium. “ Some people will say ‘oh
god, it wobbled.’ Some will say ‘oh the
gap was amazing’, others ‘terrifying’.
As long as they go back thinking ‘that
was, fun’, what a great day’ then our
job will have been done.”Six centuries on, a high-tech
link to the Arthurian legend
captured the imagination of Richard,
a French-speaking 13th century Duke
of Cornwall, that he built a castle at
Tintagel in the 1230s and 40s, with the
land-bridge integral to its design.
The castle probably fell into
disrepair by the 1330s and the crossing
gradually eroded.
Today the site attracts 250,
visitors a year. Before the bridge, the
steps meant it could take 45 minutes
to get from one side to the other and
that could be “really frustrating and
completely destroy any of the magical
feeling of being there”, said Nichola
Tasker, English Heritage’s head of
national projects.
The bridge is expected to open▲ At least 250,000 people visit the castle – purportedly King Arthur’s birthplace- each year and that is expected to increase PHOTOGRAPH: ROGER HOLLINGSWORTH/ALAMY
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