A short while ago a couple came into the church and joined us for the Friday morning Eucharist. Afterwards it turned out that they were great admirers of John Smeaton. They were from Scotland where John Smeaton is celebrated for far more than a lighthouse near Plymouth. He is remembered for bridges and canal navigations. So I decided to search the internet to see what I could muster on the man buried in our chancel and whose monument with the lighthouse on the top graces the north wall.
John Smeaton was born on 8th June 1724 at Austhorpe Lodge on the eastern edge of this parish. So this year marks his 280th birthday. He went to Leeds Grammar School, leaving at 16 to work in his father’s law practice. He gave that up and became an apprentice to a mathematical instrument maker, setting up his own business around 1750.
A search of the internet brings up an impressive list of bridges designed by him (Aberdeen, Banff, Coldstream, Hexham, Newark viaduct, Perth). He was responsible for the Forth-Clyde canal, the Calder navigation and 8 miles of canal at Ripon; Ramsgate Harbour and Pumps at London Bridge. His name pops up in a website on the history of concrete because of his discovery of hydraulic lime (calcinations of limestone containing clay which hardens under water). He even has a mathematical formula named after him called the Smeaton Coefficient (something to do with the relationship between pressure and velocity for objects moving in air).
His most famous work is of course the third lighthouse at Eddystone Reef, 14 miles south of Plymouth Sound. The first lighthouse was washed away and the second destroyed by fire. John Smeaton’s lasted 120 years and only had to be removed because the rock underneath it was undermined by the sea. It was placed on Plymouth Hoe as a memorial to him. It employed a system of interlocking Portland stone blocks. The lighthouse was held in such high regard that it accompanied Britannia on the bronze penny from 1860 until 1970 when that penny ceased to be minted due to decimalisation.
John Smeaton is honoured as the father of Civil Engineering in Britain. One of his pupils, William Jessop, founded the Society of Civil Engineers in 1771. He died on 28th October in 1792 after he suffered a stroke while walking in the garden at his Austhorpe home and was honoured in 1992 with a plaque in Westminster Abbey.
The relationship between mathematics and God may not seem that obvious to anyone struggling with their GCSE maths revision at the moment. Certainly when I mentioned something similar during a sermon recently our younger confirmation candidates gave me an odd look! But when we are looking for visions of the wonder of creation we don’t have to dig far to find that they have a mathematical base to them. From the stunning architecture of our great cathedrals like York, Ripon and Durham, or even our own parish church, to the symmetry and delicate balance of nature; even the technological revolution of the internet which relies on digital signals: order being brought out of chaos involves maths. When we celebrate creation we stand in awe and wonder at the scientific principles that under gird it.
Having a famous and celebrated engineer buried in the church provides us with a fresh angle onto our faith. John Polkinghorne, a former professor of mathematical physics turned Church of England vicar, has written on this subject of science and creation. He argues quite powerfully, and at times mind-bendingly, for how science and religion are friends not enemies.
The 280th anniversary of the birth of one of this parish’s famous sons provides an opportunity to give thanks for the wonder of creation that has such awe inspiring depths to it that make engineering possible. All our constructing harnesses the natural forces and dimensions that result in and sustain our life in the first place.
© Ian Black 2004