Obituary Note: Professor Roland Paxton MBE, FICE, FRSE, Hon DEng, PhD, MSc, Civil Engineer and Engineering Historian and Bibliophile 1932-2025 by Professor Paul Jowitt
It is with great regret that I have to inform you of the death of HWU Honorary Professor Roland Paxton, on 30th October 2025, aged 93. Roland was without doubt, the UK’s leading Civil Engineering Historian (https://ice-museum-scotland.hw.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/paxton_laureation.pdf).
When he retired from the Transportation Department in Lothian Regional Council in 1987 he was offered an Honorary Research Fellowship by HWU at my suggestion. It wasn’t long before Roland was publishing papers at engineering meetings and conferences and his post upgraded to Honorary Professor. At the time we were able to provide all staff a small travel grant for conference attendance, and he soon came to me to say he’d been by contacted the Societies of Civil Engineers in Japan and the USA to give keynote presentations there on his research on Civil Engineering History. This led him to needing a Passport – he hadn’t got one! He soon became one of the Department’s leading authors of world class research papers, very handy for successive Research Assessment Exercises. In 1996, for his work in Civil Engineering History and Conservation of Engineering Works, he has was Awarded an MBE. He Chaired the ICE’s Panel for Historical Engineering Works for many years and was awarded the ICE’s Gold Medal.
By the mid 90s he was campaigning against the deteriorating condition of the Forth Bridge, a topic picked up by Tam Dalyell MP (see Hansard 17/4/96, col 740). In 1992 he had discovered the world’s oldest surviving railway bridge, the 1811 Laigh Milton Viaduct on the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway, a derelict masonry bridge over the River Irvine in Ayrshire. Unfortunately, the railway had long since gone and the viaduct was on the verge of collapse. Undaunted, Roland set up the Laigh Milton Viaduct Conservation Trust, and then personally bought the bridge for a pound and raised the £1.1m to restore it (https:www.nationaltransporttrust.org.uk/heritage-sites/heritage-detail/laigh-milton-viaduct).
If that wasn’t enough he then got involved in the restoration of the Union Chain Bridge over the River Tweed, between Northumbria in England and Berwickshire in Scotland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Chain_Bridge).
When it opened in 1820, it was the longest wrought iron suspension bridge in the world with a span of 449 feet (137 m). It is still the oldest to be still carrying road traffic. Roland Paxton was Patron of the Friends of the Union Bridge (https://unionbridgefriends.com/). Together with the two local Councils either side of the Tweed, Northumbrian County Council and Scottish Borders Council they co-funded the bridge restoration alongside funding from the National Lottery. Roland has been no stranger to helping save historic bridges. The natural world has Sir David Attenborough. Civil engineering has had Roland Paxton!
The Institution of Civil Engineers Scotland Museum at Heriot Watt is home to a collection of over 670 artefacts relating to civil engineering, many of which have strong local connections including a number of items relating to the Forth bridges. In addition to the collection of artefacts, the website hosts The Paxton Archive which comprises over 400 papers and other documents on a wide variety of historical and biographical civil engineering topics mostly written by or about Professor Roland Paxton over several decades (https://ice-museum-scotland.hw.ac.uk/the-paxton-archive//).
The collection is owned by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and under an agreement between the Museum and Heriot-Watt University the collection is hosted by the University. Roland Paxton was largely responsible for the creation of the Museum in the mid 1990s.
Professor Paul Jowitt CBE FREng FRSE FICE
Heriot Watt University
Edinburgh
UK