HISTORY
Royal Albert Bridge
Brunel in Devon The name Isambard Kingdom Brunel was familiar to me as a child as I grew up in Clifton in Bristol, home of the iconic Brunel Clifton Suspension Bridge, although Brunel did not live to see it, as it was completed after his death. The unusual name Isambard is derived from the old German Isanbert meaning glittering iron, and Kingdom is his mother Sophia’s maiden name. Sophia Kingdom was the daughter of William Kingdom, an army and navy contractor in Plymouth, and she was the youngest of a family of 16. His father, Marc Isambard Brunel, was a French engineer and is most famous for the construction of the Thames Tunnel. Isambard was born at Number 1 Britain Street in Portsmouth and had two older sisters, Sophia and Emma - the three children would probably have been bilingual. At age 20 he began work in his father’s office in charge of the Thames Tunnel at Rotherhithe. It was the start of an extraordinary and diverse career, but in this article, I will concentrate on his engineering successes and failures in Devon. In 1836 at the age of 30, Brunel married Mary Horsley, 23, eldest daughter of composer and organist William Horsley. Brunel had declared that he would marry a woman with money and musical talent; Mary was the family beauty 58
and rich but not musical, although the family was artistic. Her brother John was a friend of Isambard and an artist – he painted pictures of Isambard and Mary. Isambard was also an artist with great aesthetic taste as shown in his architecture, engineering and garden design. The Brunels established a home at 18 Duke Street Westminster and had three children, Isambard, Henry and Florence. Brunel enjoyed entertaining his children with conjuring tricks, but in 1843 he accidentally swallowed a half sovereign which lodged in his windpipe. He designed a board which rotated on two pivots and strapped himself to the board so that the coin was dislodged by centrifugal force. Mary had a very grand style and was nicknamed the Duchess of Kensington. Brunel had fine furniture and paintings in his house and Mary had beautiful dresses and jewellery to show Brunel’s success. He worked up to twenty hours a day in his office at their house, though he was often away on business. They had 30 staff and Mary was a popular hostess, entertaining London society at their home which became an oasis of culture to which Brunel occasionally returned. He was usually working on many projects at once which he designed, engineered and
managed through contractors. His life was stressful, involving high risk novel projects, new technology, investors and funding - he also smoked 40 cigars a day. Brunel was appointed chief engineer to the Great Western Railway in 1833 and started surveying the route and raising funds. He travelled between his projects in a horse-drawn Britska, which he had designed to include a drawing board and cigar storage – he often worked and slept in it too. The Great Western Railway Bill had failed to specify the distance between the rails, although 4’8” was standard at the time. In 1836 Brunel argued that a broad gauge of 7’01/4” would enable a faster, smoother ride and the board accepted his proposal. Broad gauge performed well but there was the inconvenience of goods and passengers transferring between trains of different gauges. In 1876 all railways were changed to standard gauge. Brunel was appointed engineer to the South Devon Railway in 1843. In 1846 he argued that steam engines were inadequate for the steep gradients beyond Newton Abbot near Totnes and around Dartmoor. He proposed a novel atmospheric system moved by atmospheric (vacuum) traction which would be more efficient than
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