The Antrim Coast Road – a civil engineering legacy

Abstract

In the early 1800s, the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland conceived the idea of building the Antrim Coast Road to open up the Glens of Antrim, to give better access for the military, and to give work to the unemployed. Their civil engineer, William Bald, rose to the challenge and completed the 40 km route between 1832 and 1842. Bald was born in Burntisland in Fife in 1789. He was a civil engineer and surveyor who came to Ireland aged 20 to complete the trigonometrical survey of County Mayo. Bald had the vision of building the road along the foot of the cliffs, some of them over 100 m high. For many, it was an incredible idea. Previous plans were to build the road some distance inland, but this would have meant steep gradients as the road traversed the valleys of the Glens. The Antrim Coast Road was completed in 1842 and William Bald left to practice in Scotland and France. He died in 1857 and is buried in Highgate Cemetery in London.