Hildred Collection

Drawing Newport Transporter Bridge

Falcon D Hildred

(Industrial Heritage Vol.30, No.1 Spring 2004)  

In 1987 I was invited by Roger Cucksey, Keeper of Art at Newport Museum and Art Gallery, to produce a visual record of contemporary Newport as part of the Museum’s centenary celebrations planned for 1988. 

'Newport Now', as the project became known, took over two years to complete and received financial assistance from the Museums and Galleries Commission and Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund in London.

I had heard of the Transporter Bridge and knew I would have to include a picture of it in my show.

But being such an unusual structure, rather like a giant goal post framing an awful lot of space, it was not easy to find a satisfactory view to draw. However after two hours of wandering up and down each side of the river and along the approach roads, I finally settled on doing a sketch from Stephenson Street.

And that, I thought with satisfaction, was the end of the matter. I could now go and find somewhere for lunch, but before leaving, I may as well just take a closer look.  

As I gazed in some bewilderment at all the steelwork, a man on a moped drew up alongside me. This, I soon found out, was John McDermott, who looked after the bridge and had seen me sketching.  

“Would you like to go up and see inside the motor house?” he asked.

Naturally I accepted with alacrity, but on entering I was rather disappointed to find not a steam engine as I had expected, but an electric motor. However I feigned interest and did a sketch of it.  

Then John really surprised me. “Would you like to see it working?” he asked.

I should explain at this point that the bridge had not worked for two years due to it being closed for repairs, yet here I was being offered a personal demonstration! And so it was that I found myself looking down from the privileged vantage point of the motor house, as John ran the gondola out a short distance over the river and back again, and explained a few things about how it all worked.  

Back in his workshop over a mug of tea it dawned on me with a mixture of excitement and dismay that I wasn’t going to get away with doing just one drawing.

The bridge deserved many, and I would have to learn something about engineering in order to do them. I was in for a lot of work.  

The best way to understand anything mechanical is to take it apart and see if you can put it all back together again properly.

This, in a way, is how I set about drawing the bridge.

I took it apart and laid all the pieces out in a series of five drawings, one showing the workshop, and all the various things in there; another showing what you would see as you went onto the gondola, and so on. In this way I broke it all down into manageable sized chunks.  

But then, just when I thought I had finished, someone suggested I should form all the drawings into a book. Well, showing a picture of something is one thing. Explaining all about it is quite another. But here, John and Bill who had maintained the bridge and knew it very well came to my help.  

Yet even when I understood it all myself, I still had to find a way of explaining everything without rambling on or becoming too technical.  

So, to keep myself in check I imagined I was giving a guided tour of the bridge, and in my party were some engineers who knew all about bridges and so would quickly spot if I made a mistake.

With them were their partners who knew nothing about engineering but were willing to learn, provided I kept it simple and interesting.

Then I imagined I had some school children who were probably working on a special project such as tides or electric traction.

And finally I had some overseas visitors who didn’t understand the language that well - which is why I had to be clear and simple and explain, for example, that Newport is not so called because it was a new port, but because the name is a corruption of new fort.  

Then, as every experienced guide has learned, I had to anticipate the unexpected questions, such as “which way is the sea?” or “what were the tickets like?”

Finding some of the answers sometimes meant making a special journey all the way from North Wales, or climbing all the way up onto the boom.  

And so it came about that what originally started off as one quick site sketch, eventually became a book of over 80 drawings. It was a long slog.  

But as I said when the book was launched, for me whose drawings so often serve as a record of something which is about to be destroyed, it was a joy on this occasion to see them being used to celebrate the bridge’s re-opening.  

For further information please see the Transporter Bridge web pages

Some of Falcon Hildred's drawings created as part of 'Newport Now' are published on the People's Collection Wales (external website).