Gateshead Millennium Bridge

Interesting facts

The finished bridge was carried up the Tyne in one piece by Asian Hercules II, one of the world's largest floating cranes, on 20 November 2000.

During that journey the crane turned the bridge through 90 degrees to squeeze it around tight bends in the river.

It was lowered onto threaded bolts in its piers with a tolerance of only about 3 millimetres.

Each tilt doubles as a cleaning cycle: litter on the deck rolls down into traps built at both ends of the bridge.

The whole structure, weighing about 850 tonnes, rotates as one piece, and its upper arch was shaped to echo the curve of the Tyne Bridge upstream.

More than 150 teams entered the 1996 design competition, and local residents voted on the shortlist of six before the winner was chosen.

Its first tilt, on 28 June 2001, drew an estimated 36,000 spectators to the riverbanks.

A proposed name, Baltic Millennium Bridge, was rejected after objections from Newcastle City Council, sparking a lasting naming feud between the two councils.

Its Stirling Prize stirred debate over whether a bridge counts as architecture at all; it has collected about 25 design and lighting awards in total.

The bridge has appeared on a first-class Royal Mail stamp in 2000 and on a pound coin minted by the Royal Mint in 2007.

Why it is worth it

Most opening bridges lift, swing or slide out of the way of boat traffic. This one blinks. The Gateshead Millennium Bridge is built as a pair of matched steel arches — one carrying the pedestrian and cycle deck, the other a supporting arch above it, linked by cables — and the entire assembly pivots as a single unit on massive bearings at each end, tilting the whole structure back through 40 degrees until the walkway that pedestrians just crossed is standing on its side in the air, clearing a 25-meter gap for ships to pass beneath. Six hydraulic rams, three per side, do the lifting, and the whole rotation from flat to fully open takes as little as four and a half minutes.

The motion is deliberately theatrical: locals nicknamed it the Blinking Eye or Winking Eye Bridge because the tilt, viewed from the riverbank, looks unmistakably like a closed eyelid slowly opening. It was the first tilting bridge of its kind built anywhere, engineered by Wilkinson Eyre and Gifford (now Ramboll) and opened in 2001, and it now performs its opening act on a schedule as much for spectators gathered on both banks as for the boats it's technically built to accommodate. The design won its architects the RIBA Stirling Prize, Britain's top architecture award, the following year.

Good to know

The tilt happens on a published schedule rather than continuously — check locally for the next opening if seeing the full motion is the point of the visit, since on an ordinary day the bridge may simply sit flat.

Getting there

Located in Gateshead. Newcastle International Airport (NCL) is about 10 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

The Gateshead Millennium Bridge is a pedestrian and cyclist tilt bridge spanning the River Tyne between Gateshead arts quarter on the south bank and Newcastle upon Tyne's Quayside area on the north bank. It was the first tilting bridge ever to be constructed. Opened for public use in 2001, the award-winning structure was conceived and designed by architectural practice WilkinsonEyre and structural engineering firm Gifford. The bridge is sometimes called the 'Blinking Eye Bridge' or the 'Winking Eye Bridge' due to its shape and its tilting method. The Millennium Bridge stands as the twentieth tallest structure in the city, and is shorter in stature than the neighbouring Tyne Bridge.

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