William Bald
| William Bald | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1789 Burntisland, Fife, Scotland |
| Died | 1857 London, England |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Engineering career | |
| Discipline |
Civil Mining Cartography |
| Institutions |
Royal Society of Edinburgh Royal Irish Academy Geological Society of London Institution of Civil Engineers Societe de Geographie |
| Projects |
Map of Maritime County of Mayo Antrim Coast Road Clyde River improvements |
William Bald FRSE MRIA FGS MWS (c. 1789 – March 1857) was a Scottish surveyor, cartographer and civil engineer.
Bald was the cousin of Robert Bald, surveyor and mining engineer.
William Bald was born in Burntisland, Fife in 1789. He left school in Burntisland at the age of 12 and, after a brief period of schooling in Edinburgh, was apprenticed to John Ainslie in 1803. This was an impressive start to his working life, as Ainslie was the leading Scottish map-maker of his generation.
Around this time, there was a strong demand for map-making services from Scottish landowners, who were keen to develop their estates and thereby increase their profitability. It was on such projects that Bald, supervised by Ainslie, initially worked . Bald must have developed his cartographic expertise remarkably quickly, because within two years he was given personal responsibility for mapping the Western Isles of Scotland – at the age of only 17! The maps which he produced were a major factor in transforming the way in which the Western Isles were depicted in the new atlases of the day.
Bald moved to Ireland by 1809, and at the age of 21 was embarking on his most significant period of work. In 1815, he was describing himself as a Land Surveyor, and was living in Castlebar, County Mayo. It was in Ireland that his principal mapping, surveying and civil engineering works were undertaken, and it is in Ireland that he is chiefly remembered today. He was responsible for the construction and improvement of roads, harbours and railways throughout Ireland. As Director of the Trigonometrical Survey of Co. Mayo he produced a 25-sheet map of the county, completed in 1830, which is regarded as a masterpiece.
From 1826 to 1830, Bald worked in France, before returning to Ireland. Among his many projects there were improvements to the River Boyne and the harbour at Drogheda. He was also responsible for Ireland's first suspension bridge, at Kenmare in County Kerry.
But his most famous work is the Antrim Coast Road, which is regarded as one of Ireland's most scenic drives. He built the 40 km route from Larne to Cushendall between 1832 and 1842. Bald had the vision of building the road along the foot of the cliffs, some of them over 100 metres high. This was a novel idea, as previous plans had been to build the road some distance inland. But this would have meant steep gradients as the road traversed the valleys of the Glens as they ran down from the Antrim Plateau to the sea. Bald decided to blast the cliff face which then fell down onto the foreshore to form the base for the new road.
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Wikipedia