William Halcrow

William Halcrow
Born	4 July 1883 Bishopwearmouth
Died	31 October 1958
Engineering career
Discipline	Civil,
Institutions	Institution of Civil Engineers (president),

Sir William Halcrow (4 July 1883 – 31 October 1958) was one of the most notable English civil engineers of the 20th century, particularly renowned for his expertise in the design of tunnels and for projects during the Second World War.

Halcrow was born in Bishopwearmouth, Sunderland, (at 9 Shakespeare Terrace) at a time when Sunderland was the site of extensive railway and harbour developments.

He joined the London-based firm of PW and CS Meik as a pupil (coincidentally, engineering brothers Patrick Meik and Charles Meik were also born in Bishopwearmouth) in the early 1900s and one of his earliest projects was the Kinlochleven hydroelectric scheme in the Western Highlands of Scotland, where he worked as assistant resident engineer.

In 1910 he left the firm to gain overseas experience (working on construction of the King George V Dock in Singapore). During World War I, back in Scotland, he was in charge of the construction of the Invergordon naval base and for defences at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands.

After a brief return to Singapore to work on the Johor-Singapore Causeway (c.1919), he returned to rejoin Charles Meik and work on the design of the Lochaber hydroelectric scheme. When Meik died in 1923, the delivery of this ambitious project (which involved boring a main tunnel 5m in diameter and 24 km long under the northern edge of the Ben Nevis massif, and creating a series of dams and reservoirs) was left in Halcrow's hands; that same year, the firm was renamed CS Meik and Halcrow.

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