Qualla: Irish Sea Bridge

Irish Sea Bridge: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit user:NordNordWest, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Victorians wanted it. The Edwardians thought about it. Politicians have been raising the idea every couple of decades ever since: a bridge or tunnel across the Irish Sea, joining the island of Great Britain to the island of Ireland. The most recent revival began in January 2018 when a Liverpool architecture professor sketched a route from Portpatrick on the Galloway coast to Larne in County Antrim - 45 kilometres of bridge across the North Channel. Boris Johnson loved the idea. Engineers were less sure. There was, among other things, the matter of the unexploded ammunition.

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Image: user:NordNordWest | CC BY-SA 3.0

Irish Sea Bridge: Beaufort's Dyke

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit K. St.B. Collins, Public domain. About midway across the proposed route lies a deep underwater trench called Beaufort's Dyke. It is roughly 30 miles long and reaches depths of more than 300 metres. After the Second World War, the British military used it as a dump for surplus munitions - by some estimates more t...

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Image: K. St.B. Collins | Public domain

Irish Sea Bridge: The Boris Years

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nick-D, CC BY-SA 4.0. Politicians across both islands, perhaps surprisingly, lined up to back the study. Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon supported it. So did the Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney. So did Northern Ireland's Arlene Foster and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who pointed out that peo...

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Image: Nick-D | CC BY-SA 4.0

Irish Sea Bridge: The Feasibility Study

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nick-D, CC BY-SA 4.0. The full feasibility study, conducted by two senior engineers at the recommendation of Sir Peter Hendy's infrastructure review - Douglas Oakervee, former chairman of HS2 and Crossrail, and Gordon Masterton, formerly of Jacobs Engineering - was published in November 2021. The cost...

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Image: Nick-D | CC BY-SA 4.0

Irish Sea Bridge: What Could Have Been

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nick-D, CC BY-SA 4.0. The report did note what the bridge would have created. More than 35,000 jobs in design and construction. A potential carbon-neutral structure within 40 to 60 years of completion, with the bridge platform doubling as a wind, tidal and solar power generator. A tourism corridor bet...

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Image: Nick-D | CC BY-SA 4.0