While Sweden's Kiruna Church usually makes headlines for its stunning architecture (it was once voted the country's most beautiful pre-1950 construction, after all), it's in the news for a very different reason – it's been on the move.
Huge crowds gathered as it was moved three miles to its new location – and save it from ground subsidence in the process. But it's not the biggest building that's ever been moved, nor is it the oldest...
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Best relocation projects around the world
Kiruna Church, Sweden
Not just any old place of worship, the 35m-high, 40m-wide, 672-tonne Kiruna Church was once voted the most beautiful pre-1950 construction in all of Sweden. Unfortunately, the 113-year-old timber building was also endangered by ground subsidence brought on by the city’s iron-ore mines. Lifted onto a 224-wheeled trolley, the church spent two days travelling three miles to its new home, costing the mining company an unholy amount of money (c. £373m).
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Smeaton’s Tower, Plymouth
The tower began life as a lighthouse on Eddystone Rocks off the Cornish coast. When a new light replaced it in 1882, it was decided to dismantle the 22m-high edifice and rebuild it on Plymouth Hoe as a memorial to its designer, John Smeaton. It was a hazardous undertaking amidst notoriously rough seas and the lowest section proved simply too difficult to move. The stump remains on Eddystone Rocks today, imperceptibly eroding away.
London Bridge, Arizona, USA
‘Some American mistakenly thought he was buying Tower Bridge but he got boring old London Bridge instead.’ It’s a popular story but, sadly, mythical. In 1968, the 137-year-old London Bridge could not cope with the capital’s traffic and was sold to Missourian oilman Robert P. McCulloch for $2.46m. A cool 10,000 tonnes of its granite blocks were shipped across the Atlantic and reconstructed over the Bridgewater Channel at Lake Havasu City as a tourist attraction.
Lower Nubia, Egypt and Sudan
The successful relocation of 22 ancient monuments in Lower Nubia during the building of the Aswan Dam was described in UNESCO’s magazine as ‘the greatest archaeological rescue operation of all time’. Involving a 50-nation coalition, it was completed in 1980, after two decades of work. The monuments, including the two temples of Abu Simbel, were cut up, dismantled, moved to higher ground and carefully reassembled, saving them from a watery grave.
St Fagans National Museum of History, near Cardiff
Founded in 1946, St Fagans takes its inspiration from the world’s oldest open-air museum – Skansen in Sweden – which comprises reassembled buildings in vernacular styles. St Fagans' eclectic collection of over 40 structures includes a chapel, various mills, a tollbooth and even a pigsty. And, more recently, a Cardiff pub called The Vulcan Hotel.
Belle Tout, East Sussex
While Smeaton’s Tower is a fine example of a lighthouse taken down and reconstructed, Belle Tout – sitting on Beachy Head – was simply picked up and moved. Or rather, in 1999 the 850-tonne building was carefully slid 17m along greased steel-topped beams, saving it from toppling into the sea as the chalky cliffs eroded. With commendable forward thinking, the new location has been constructed to enable the lighthouse to be shifted further inland if necessary. Follow our route from Eastbourne to Beachy Head to see it for yourself.
39 Fizuli/Fuzuli Street, Azerbaijan
But all of these pale in comparison with 39 Fizuli/Fuzuli Street, Baku. The 20m-high mansion, built by an oil magnate in 1908, weighs in at 18,000 tonnes and in April 2013 became the world’s heaviest building ever moved intact. A Dutch engineering firm was given the task of shifting it precisely 10.5m. It’s just a pity that the reason for the venture was so prosaic: it was shifted as part of a road-widening scheme.
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