Description

Forth Road Bridge Opening Programme. Page 1 of the programme has been signed by a number of people who were invited to attend the opening ceremony. The date of the opening ceremony was 4 September 1964.

This item was the property of the donor’s father, Gordon Cecil Lang (1912 – 1988) who was the Director of the film “The Forth Road Bridge (1965)” (see 2014/007). The donor reports that his father “can claim to have been, perhaps the first civilian to walk on the road bridge as he recorded the Queen being the first person to ‘officially’ drive over the bridge on the opening day”.

In the second image attached to this entry there is a signature (top left) for James (Jimmy) Laverty BEM. Jimmy, the steel erectors’ foreman, was the first man to cross the catwalks from one side of the bridge to the other. (See www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p025884n/p0252s95.)