Charles Labelye

The old Westminster Bridge, painting by Canaletto 1746

Charles Labelye (born August 1705 in Vevey , † 1762 in Paris ) was a Swiss civil engineer . He worked in England, where he was the builder and architect of the first Westminster Bridge .

life and work

Labelye was baptized on August 12, 1705 in Vevey as the son of François Dangeau, Sieur de La Bélye, and Elisabeth, née Grammont. His father had left France as a Huguenot because of religious persecution. He is said to have been related to the Marquis de Dangeau , who was influential under Louis XIV . Labelye came to England around 1720 or 1725, for in his report on Westminster Bridge in 1739 he wrote that he had not heard a word of English before the age of 20. Elsewhere he wrote that he had been in England since 1720. In London he moved in Huguenot and Freemason circles (member of a French lodge from 1725) and was acquainted with JT Desaguliers (1683–1744), with whom he exchanged views on equations of motion in 1735, which is included in the Course of Experimental Physics (1745) found by Desagulier. He visited the Netherlands, but was back in London in 1728, making maps of the Thames, which he provided to supporters of Westminster Bridge in 1734. His hydrodynamic calculations were also used in a proposal for a stone bridge over the Thames in Westminster by Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661–1736). This was the first scientifically based contribution on bridge building in England. In a 1736 map of The Downs , he identified himself as an engineer and math teacher in the Royal Navy .

In 1736 the construction of Westminster Bridge was decided by parliamentary act and Labelye, who in 1737 was one of five people who provided the bridge building commission, in which Pembroke was particularly active, with maps of the Thames, became the engineer of the bridge in 1738 with the assistance of Henry Herbert Earl of Pembroke , who laid the foundation stone in 1739 and was also involved in the architecture of the bridge. His annual salary was £ 100. The choice of a foreigner caused considerable criticism from his rivals, including Batty Langley (1696–1751). Labelye was originally only commissioned to build the pillars, but in 1740 a modified version of his arch design was also adopted. The bridge had fifteen arches and fourteen piers. Construction lasted from 1738 (first piles for the foundation) to the opening in November 1750 due to numerous delays. He was criticized by the public and by competitors such as Batty Langley in some cases harshly, especially after cracks appeared due to subsidence in 1746, which, together with the building supervision, was detrimental to his health even on cold winter days (asthma). The bridge was replaced by a new bridge built between 1854 and 1862.

In 1739 Labelye published a report on the bridge ( A short account of the methods made use of in laying the foundation of the piers of Westminster Bridge ), reissued in an expanded form in 1751.

During the construction of the Westminster Bridge, caissons were used for the first time to build the pillar foundations. They were built out of wood on land and floated in. Although he was not the inventor of the method, he was the first to use it on a large scale. The original intention of Labelye to set up the caissons on pile foundations was not realized for cost reasons, with consequences for the stability (subsidence). In 1746 the bridge was practically finished, but there were cracks in one of the bridge arches, so that the opening was delayed until 1750. Labelye received £ 2,000 after construction and continued to work as an engineer for £ 150 a year.

He also built the Brentford Bridge over the Thames (1740 to 1742) and he made plans (1746) for the renewal of London Bridge , which were not implemented. He was also active in hydraulic engineering and port construction with proposals (not implemented) (Sandwich, Great Yarmouth, Sunderland). Another of his protégés was John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford , who commissioned him with a report on the drainage of the Fens , which appeared in 1745 ( The Result of a View of the Great Level of the Fens ).

He became a British citizen in 1746, but moved to the south of France in 1752. In 1753 he was in Naples and later in Paris, where he made friends with the bridge builder Jean Rodolphe Peronnet , whose family also came from Vevey. He left a model of Westminster Bridge and records to Peronnet. Drawings for the foundation of the bridge (caissons) can be found in the Architecture hydraulique by Bernard de Bélidor (Volume 4, 1752). In 1752 he described the bridge as the greatest building of the time. At Le Sage ( Recueil de divers mémoires extrait de la Bibliothèque des Ponts et Chaussées , 1810) there is also an illustration of a construction machine invented by Labelye for sawing wooden stakes under water.

There are different information about the time of his death (up to 1781), but a death in Paris in 1762 is likely based on reports in the English press. It is not known whether he was married and had children.

literature

• Roger Bowdler: Labelye, Charles . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . 2004.

Web links

• Entry by Richard Bissell Prosser in the Dictionary of National Biography , old edition

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Richard Bissell Prosser: Labelye, Charles. In: Dict. Nat. Biogr. Smith, Elder & Co., Volume 31, 1885-1900 ( Wikisource ).
2. ↑ Roger Bowdler: Labelye, Charles . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . 2004.