Humber Bridge Building Sights

BBC Four Collections - archive programmes chosen by experts.

For this collection, Janet Street-Porter has selected

programmes about post-war architecture.

More programmes on this theme and other BBC Four Collections

are available on BBC iPlayer.

WIND WHISTLES

Up here in the gods,

you really get the feeling that you're part of something fundamental.

Not just because this is one of the modern wonders of the world,

but it's one of those monumental locations

on the surface of the planet.

It's not just the longest span in the world, it's also the loneliest,

surrounded by lowland and sea level.

It seems to exaggerate all of its proportions,

and makes it a landmark in every sense of the word.

Or a watermark, even,

set against those pale horizons of water and sky.

LOW BUZZING

Closed-circuit TV, monitors, surveillance,

smoked glass, uniforms,

documents being examined, money changing hands.

There's something a little bit sinister

about the control tower and the tollbooths,

something a little bit Big Brother,

or Eastern European, even -

reminiscent of a border crossing or a checkpoint.

The barriers and the signals are the sort you might come up against

at a frontier between two territories.

And those vehicles making the journey at dawn or at dusk

look like they're leaving for a new world across the water.

The Greenwich meridian actually crosses the Humber,

and if it were a real thing rather than an imaginary line,

it would probably look something like this.

Underneath, it's a road to nowhere,

giving the impression of being never-ending

or having no real destination or point of arrival.

Like a rainbow.

And on top, it's so much more than a way of getting from A to B.

It's an art installation of some type,

celebrating the ideals of balance and symmetry and poise.

Personally, I find it very satisfying

that the greatest bridge of its type should be here,

spanning the mud flats of Humberside,

or the East Riding of Yorkshire, as I like to think of it.

It's also a tug of war going on between two shorelines,

or a harp that plays when the wind blows through it,

or a cat's cradle strung out across a river.

Or spun out, I should say.

It's hard to believe, but the main cables are made up

of one continuous strand of wire

just a few millimetres thick.

And during construction, a spinning wheel carried the thread

up and over the shoulders of one tower,

out across the river to the far side, and back again, about 15,000 times.

Like winding a length of wool onto two outstretched arms.

The bridge is so long,

it has to take into account the curvature of the Earth,

which is worth bearing in mind when it comes to walking across it -

stepping out into the wild blue yonder.

The best way of understanding a suspension bridge

is to think of a washing line,

where the towers are the props, the cable is the line itself

and the road is the washing blowing around in the breeze.

It's also about suspension of disbelief,

because if you thought about it for too long,

you'd never set foot on it again.

It's completely improbable.

The roadway itself was the last part of the bridge to be built.

It's made up of steel boxes hoisted into position

and spliced together.

The boxes are hollow,

making the inside of the bridge a corridor,

through hundreds of metal rooms, or tanks.

Looking through them is a trick of the light, a time tunnel,

doors disappearing inside each other, all the way to infinity.

In summer it's like an oven.

And like a freezer in winter.

RUMBLING AND SCREECHING

And deafening all year-round with the thunder of traffic

just inches overhead.

FOOTSTEPS ECHO

This is one of the four inner sanctums, the southeast anchorage.

where all of the wire that makes up one of the main cables

is held in position by good old-fashioned nuts and bolts.

You have to keep reminding yourself that this isn't

hundreds and thousands of different wires.

It's all one - 22,000 miles of it, looped over and lashed together.

It could be the inside of a grand piano.

Everything here is very finely tuned, highly strung.

It's hard not to think of a catapult, or a crossbow drawn back.

There's a precarious silence

which seems to match the tension and force and pressure of this place.

It's almost cathedral-like in here.

It makes you feel like whispering,

or lighting a candle, or leaving money in a box.

Most of the water in the north of England runs through here,

so I can think of the bridge as something that symbolises

the coming together of all those rivers and streams

that stretch back like arteries into the heart of the country.

And going inland, the Humber comes out of the River Ouse,

which comes out of the Aire, which comes out of the Calder

which comes out of the Colne that springs in the village where I live.

So, technically, I could sail home from here.

And if I'd been away at sea, this bridge would be the perfect gateway

to look out for and come back through.