Finnieston Crane
From Glasgow
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The Finnieston Crane is a crane and landmark in Glasgow. Once the largest crane in Europe it is now disused but is retained as an symbol of the city's engineering heritage.
The crane was commissioned in 1926 by the Clyde Navigation Trust, the operators of the port and dock facilities in Glasgow. It was built in 1931 by Cowans, Sheldon & Company of Carlisle and assembled at the Stobcross Quay on the north bank of the River Clyde in Glasgow the following year, costing a total of £52,351. It is officially known as the Stobcross Crane (or, to the navigation trust as Clyde Navigation Trustees crane #7), but its proximity to the (now filled-in) Finnieston Quay has led to its being popularly known as the Finnieston Crane. It is a hammerhead-shaped crane, measuring 60 metres (200 feet) tall with a 45 metre (150 feet) cantilevered jib – then the largest crane in Europe. It has a gross weight of around 2,000 tons and a lifting capacity of 175 tons. Its height is ascended by a spiral steel staircase, steepening with ascent.
Connected to a spur of the Stobcross railway, the crane's primary purpose was to lift massive boilers and engines onto new ships; at the time Glasgow was one of the leading shipbuilding cities in the world. With the decline of the shipbuilding industry, the crane survived with a secondary use, loading heavy machinery - mainly Springburn's then renowned locomotives - for export. With the downturn in seafaring trade, use of the crane continued to decline and it fell completely into disuse in the early 1990s.
Today the crane remains as a landmark, a Category A listed structure, and one of the most identifiable images of Glasgow. During the 1988 Glasgow Garden Festival (sited on the Queens Dock on the opposite bank of the river) a full-size replica locomotive, made from straw by local sculptor George Wyllie, was suspended from the crane. The crane's image is used extensively in the media; Since 1986 as the logo of TV production company Clydeside Television Productions and more recently by BBC Scotland news programmes and for the quintessentially Glaswegian crime drama Taggart. It stands as a symbol to the industrial heartland that Glasgow and the Clyde were in the early to mid-20th century, and as a symbolism of the downturn of those industries. The docks having long since been filled in to be replaced with the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre and the Clyde Auditorium. The North Rotunda (part of the defunct Clyde Harbour Tunnel) stands next to the crane.
