William Fairhurst
Encyclopedia
Dr. William Albert Fairhurst CBE (21 August 1903, Alderley Edge
Alderley Edge
Alderley Edge is a village and civil parish within the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. According to the 2001 census the parish had a population of 4,409....

, England – 13 March 1982, Howick, New Zealand
Howick, New Zealand
Howick is an eastern suburb of Auckland, New Zealand, forming part of what is sometimes called East Auckland. Due to the relatively numerous remaining heritage buildings and other historical remnants from its early European settlement past, it has been called "perhaps Auckland's most historically...

) was an English-born bridge designer and chess master of world renown. Unusually, he was highly accomplished in both disciplines and for many years successfully divided his time between two distinguished careers. He was awarded the CBE
CBE
CBE and C.B.E. are abbreviations for "Commander of the Order of the British Empire", a grade in the Order of the British Empire.Other uses include:* Chemical and Biochemical Engineering...

 for his services to engineering and in chess, gained the title of International Master in 1951.

Chess player

Born in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, Fairhurst was thirteen when he taught himself to play chess from a collection of books at the family home. During this developmental stage, he was inspired by the teachings of Siegbert Tarrasch
Siegbert Tarrasch
Siegbert Tarrasch was one of the strongest chess players and most influential chess teachers of the late 19th century and early 20th century....

 and consequently his playing style was based, for the most part, on dogmatic strategic concepts. By eighteen, he was Cheshire County Champion and a little later, moved to Lancashire, where he established a reputation as one of the leading players in the North of England. As an amateur, he had little opportunity to play in international tournaments, but he did compete at Scarborough in 1927, finishing second, tied with Frederick Yates
Frederick Yates
Frederick Dewhurst Yates was an English chess master who won the British Chess Championship on six occasions...

, ahead of several recognised masters including Efim Bogoljubov, Sir George Thomas
George Alan Thomas
Sir George Alan Thomas, Bart. was a British badminton, tennis and chess player. He was twice British Chess Champion and a 21-time All-England Badminton champion. He also played in the semi-finals of the men's tennis doubles at Wimbledon in 1911...

 and Victor Buerger
Victor Buerger
Victor Buerger was a Ukrainian–British chess player.Victor Berger was a member of London Chess Club....

. Notably, he defeated not only the hugely experienced Bogoljubov, but also the first-prize winner, Edgard Colle
Edgard Colle
Edgard Colle was a Belgian chess master. He scored excellent results in major international tournaments, including first at Amsterdam 1926, ahead of Savielly Tartakower and future world champion Max Euwe; first at Meran 1926, ahead of Esteban Canal; and first at Scarborough 1930, ahead of Maróczy...

. It was around this time, in his twenties, that he edited a well-respected games section in the magazine Chess Amateur.

In 1931, he went to live in Scotland and laid the foundations for a chess boom north of the border, winning the national championship
Scottish Chess Championship
The Scottish Chess Championship is organised by Chess Scotland, formerly the Scottish Chess Association. It has been running since 1884, and nowadays takes the form of a nine round tournament played over two weekends and the week in between...

 a record eleven times between 1932 and 1962. A gifted blindfold
Blindfold chess
Blindfold chess is a form of chess play wherein the players do not see the positions of the pieces or touch them. This forces players to maintain a mental model of the positions of the pieces...

 player, he held a twelve-board simultaneous blindfold exhibition in 1932 at the Glasgow Polytechnic Club, winning nine games and drawing three. A year later, he drew a six-game match with the then Austrian master Erich Eliskases
Erich Eliskases
Erich Gottlieb Eliskases was a chess Grandmaster of the 1930s and 1940s, who represented Austria, Germany and Argentina in international competition....

, a player of noted strength and very much a rising star in world chess. In 1937, Fairhurst won a fiercely contested British Championship
British Chess Championship
The British Chess Championship is organised by the English Chess Federation. There are separate championships for men and women. Since 1923 there have been sections for juniors, and since 1982 there has been an over-sixty championship. The championship venue usually changes every year and has been...

 in Blackpool
Blackpool
Blackpool is a borough, seaside town, and unitary authority area of Lancashire, in North West England. It is situated along England's west coast by the Irish Sea, between the Ribble and Wyre estuaries, northwest of Preston, north of Liverpool, and northwest of Manchester...

.

Playing team chess, he represented Great Britain many times, in a series of matches with Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

, the Netherlands and Russia, held between 1937 and 1954. Playing board one, he spearheaded the Scottish Chess Olympiad
Chess Olympiad
The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams from all over the world compete against each other. The event is organised by FIDE, which selects the host nation.-Birth of the Olympiad:The first Olympiad was unofficial...

 team on six occasions between 1933 and 1968; his victims included the Danish champion and future world championship contender Bent Larsen
Bent Larsen
Jørgen Bent Larsen was a Danish chess Grandmaster and author. Larsen was known for his imaginative and unorthodox style of play and he was the first western player to pose a serious challenge to the Soviet Union's dominance of chess...

, who was close to his peak. In 1947, he played in a radio match with Australia and at the end of the year, achieved a creditable fifth place at the Hastings International Chess Congress
Hastings International Chess Congress
The Hastings International Chess Congress is an annual chess congress which takes place in Hastings, England, around the turn of the year. The main event is the Hastings Premier tournament, which was traditionally a 10 to 16 player round-robin tournament. In 2004/05 the tournament was played in the...

 of 1947/48. His next performance at Hastings was similarly praiseworthy, finishing the 1948/49 event in a tie for fourth place.

In 1950, chess organisers took advantage of the fact that the leading players of England, Scotland, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa were all gathered in Britain at the same time. An impromptu first (unofficial) Commonwealth Chess Championship
Commonwealth Chess Championship
The Commonwealth Chess Championship is a gathering of chess players from Commonwealth countries.-History:A championship was planned for New Zealand in 1949, but it was canceled because the British Chess Federation was unable to attend.-Oxford 1950:...

 was arranged and held in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

. Fairhurst won the event, ahead of Daniel Yanofsky
Daniel Yanofsky
Daniel Abraham Yanofsky, OC, QC was Canada's first chess grandmaster, an eight-time Canadian Chess Champion, a chess writer, a chess arbiter, and a lawyer.-Life in chess:...

, Robert Wade
Robert Wade (chess player)
Robert Graham Wade OBE , was a British chess player, writer, arbiter, coach, and promoter. He was New Zealand champion three times, British champion twice, and played in seven Chess Olympiads and one Interzonal tournament...

 and Wolfgang Heidenfeld
Wolfgang Heidenfeld
Wolfgang Heidenfeld was a chess player.Heidenfeld was born in Berlin. He was forced to move from Germany to South Africa because he was a Jew. There, he won the South African Chess Championship eight times, and he represented South Africa in the Chess Olympiad in 1958...

, among others. He later lost a match to Wade in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

 in 1953.

As the best of his playing days drew to a close, Fairhurst continued to give generously of his time and money, for the furtherance of Scottish Chess. He was made President of the Scottish Chess Association (SCA) from 1956 and forged new links with the British Chess Federation. At the end of his allotted tenure, he took control of the SCA, appointed himself President and retained the right to choose who joined him on the board. For a while, this was an improvement over the muddled state that the SCA had previously endured. Later however, his influence became overbearing and following a controversy about team selection for the Lugano 1968 Olympiad
18th Chess Olympiad
The 18th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between October 17 and November 7, 1968, in Lugano, Switzerland.-References:* OlimpBase...

, where he tried to block the inclusion of a player, he was deposed and asked to appoint a successor.

His business interests caused him to move to New Zealand around 1970. While there, he played in the New Zealand Chess Championship
New Zealand Chess Championship
The New Zealand Chess Championship was first conducted in 1879.Note: Up until 1934 foreign players were eligible for the title. The eligibility rules were changed in 1935 to preclude this; John Angus Erskine was born in Invercargill and was therefore eligible although he was domiciled in...

 and decided that he liked the country so much, it would make an ideal venue for his retirement. He competed at the Nice 1974 Olympiad
21st Chess Olympiad
The 21st Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between June 6 and June 30, 1974, in Nice, France.-References:* OlimpBase...

 for his new adopted country, playing board one and registering a 40% score; an outstanding result for a seventy-year-old.

Bridge designer

After building a career and reputation for himself in civil and structural engineering
Structural engineering
Structural engineering is a field of engineering dealing with the analysis and design of structures that support or resist loads. Structural engineering is usually considered a specialty within civil engineering, but it can also be studied in its own right....

, Fairhurst became the senior partner in his own engineering consultancy, W. A. Fairhurst and Partners. Specialising in bridge design, the largest and most prestigious of his projects was the design of the new Tay Road Bridge
Tay Road Bridge
The Tay Road Bridge is a bridge across the Firth of Tay from Newport-on-Tay in Fife to Dundee in Scotland. At around , it is one of the longest road bridges in Europe, and slopes gradually downward towards Dundee...

, which crosses the Tay estuary and links north-east Fife
Fife
Fife is a council area and former county of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire...

 with the city of Dundee
Dundee
Dundee is the fourth-largest city in Scotland and the 39th most populous settlement in the United Kingdom. It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firth of Tay, which feeds into the North Sea...

. It was, at the time, the longest river crossing in Europe, measuring approximately 1.4 miles. Costing £6 million, the bridge was opened in 1966 at a ceremony performed by HRH The Queen Mother
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the queen consort of King George VI from 1936 until her husband's death in 1952, after which she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II...

. Other notable projects included the Kingston Bridge, Glasgow
Kingston Bridge, Glasgow
The Kingston Bridge is a balanced cantilever dual-span ten lane road bridge made of triple-cell segmented prestressed concrete box girders crossing the River Clyde in Glasgow, Scotland. The largest urban bridge in the United Kingdom, it carries the M8 motorway through the city centre...

 (1970) and the Queen Elizabeth II Metro Bridge
Queen Elizabeth II Metro Bridge
The Queen Elizabeth II Bridge carries the Tyne and Wear Metro between Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead over the River Tyne in northeast England. The line is in tunnel on either side of the river and only emerges into open air to cross the bridge.-History:...

 (1980) in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. There were many other bridges in Scotland and also in New Zealand, where he was lured to advise on a particularly difficult structure in the early 1970s, and where he made a home for his retirement.

For his engineering achievements, he received a Doctorate, and through The Queen's honours list, a CBE. At the pinnacle of his profession, Fairhurst was honoured with the Presidency of the Scottish Branch of the Institution of Structural Engineers
Institution of Structural Engineers
The Institution of Structural Engineers is a professional body for structural engineering based in the United Kingdom. It has 27,000 members in 105 countries. The Institution provides professional accreditation for structural engineers...

. In his time, he was the author of the text Arch Design Simplified and a member of the Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland
Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland
The Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland was a Scottish public body.It was appointed in 1927 "to enquire into such questions of public amenity or of artistic importance relating to Scotland as may be referred to them by any of our Departments of State and to report thereon to such Departments;...

.

His engineering company continues to thrive today, working out of 15 principal offices and employing 500 staff, it is one of the largest such companies in the UK, trading more usually under the name Fairhurst Consulting Structural and Civil Engineers.

Further reading


External links

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