Govan Fairfield-Giants of the Clyde

Miles Oglethorpe is Head of Industrial Heritage at Historic Environment Scotland. He led the team responsible for the Forth Bridge’s World Heritage inscription in 2015, but his remit covers industrial heritage across Scotland. In addition, he has been president of TICCIH since 2018, which advises ICOMOS and UNESCO on industrial heritage, and has worked with partners in Japan on Scottish industrial heritage, notably in Nagasaki.

This talk will include Nagasaki, but will initially focus on the trigger that ignited interest in the Giant Cantilever Crane – the discovery of records at Sir William Arrol’s recently closed Dalmarnock Iron Works in Glasgow back in 1987. This led to a long partnership with Dr Brian Newman of Newcastle University, whose work on the history of these cranes has proved to be invaluable. Thanks to his exhaustive research, we have an idea of how many were built and how many survive across the world today. Of these, only a handful continue to operate, and some are under threat, not least in Glasgow.