ALL across Scotland there are places named after slavers and merchants who made their wealth from slavery. There are also monuments to great men who deserve them, although there will always be arguments about who exactly did what to earn a statue or memorial.

Disgracefully, there are precious few statutes and monuments that commemorate the achievements of Scottish women, but hopefully that can be put right in the future.

The recent Black Lives Matter campaign that led to the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol got me to thinking about the people and places that are indelibly associated with the Union between England and Scotland.

In many places across Scotland you will find the names of Hanoverian monarchs and princes who were celebrated for their role in defeating Jacobitism – Cumberland Street in Edinburgh is a classic example. Should the capital city really still be memorialising the Butcher of Culloden? But then you need to know that most lowland Scots were supporters of the Hanoverian dynasty as much for religious reasons as anything else.

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Apart from a few protests I see no great clamour for slavery-related streets to be renamed, but when Scotland becomes independent, what are we going to do about the many Union Streets across the country? I used to live round the corner from one in a west coast town, and of course Union Street is the main thoroughfare in central Aberdeen, though it is actually named after the Acts of Union with Ireland in 1800.

Union Streets will surely need to be renamed, you would think. How about Freedom Streets or Independence Streets? On second thoughts, let’s just get independence and leave Union thingies well alone to remind us in future about why we left this dysfunctional, broken, unfair and redundant Union.

There’s one “Union” I will campaign to leave untouched. It was 200 years ago this week that one of the most significant Union locations was opened. On July 26, 1820, a former Royal Navy officer, Captain Samuel Brown, later a knight, had the honour of being the first person to walk across the Union Chain Bridge over the River Tweed between Scotland and England.

He thoroughly deserved that honour because Brown had designed what remains the oldest operational suspension bridge in the world. When it opened, the “Iron Bar Bridge of Suspension”, as it was originally named, was the longest suspension bridge in the world and the first to carry wheeled traffic.

It was a phenomenon of 19th-century engineering, and in its own way it is a truly beautiful structure as well as being a credit to its builders.

I am indebted to several sources for historic accounts of the Union Bridge which, since it actually does link England and Scotland, should retain its name to show that, while we will hopefully be going our separate ways, we are still conjoined to the southern part of the island of Great Britain. Union Bridge, on thinking about it, could be a symbol of the links we will still have with England.

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Even its construction was about the Union, as Brown was born in London to a Scottish father, William Brown from Borland in Galloway. Capt Brown had risen to prominence in the Navy by his genius idea to use wrought iron chain cables instead of ropes.

He took out patents on developments of his ironware, such as shackles and swivels, and in 1812 he left the Navy to set up a company manufacturing iron chains, principally for anchors.

With his cousin Samuel Lenox he set up Brown Lenox and Co and they based themselves at Pontypridd in Wales near supplies of iron ore and coal. They built longer and stronger iron chains for the Navy and other customers, before Brown turned his attention to the idea of bridges.

By 1817, the Tweed had already been crossed at Dryburgh by a cable-stayed bridge.

On visiting the area Brown is said to have viewed the bridge and conceived of a bigger bridge to cross the Tweed downriver near Berwick-upon-Tweed, notwithstanding the fact that the Dryburgh bridge had collapsed in 1818.

According to the writer Charles Bender: “When he was thinking about how to build a bridge across the River Tweed, Sir Samuel Brown stopped while observing a spider’s web. Right at this time he discovered the suspension bridge."

Brown promptly decided to put his ideas into practice and he built a 105ft long prototype to test his theory that an iron suspension system could be equally safe, but much less expensive, than bridges using masonry for support.

The site for the bridge was already established – just upstream from a ford which was often unnavigable between Horncliffe in Northumberland and Fishwick in Berwickshire.

The money for the bridge came from the Berwick and North Durham Turnpike Trust who raised the £8000 cost of the bridge, that sum being about a third of what a full masonry bridge might have cost.

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With his design approved and his chains rigorously tested, Brown superintended the construction which began in August, 1819. It was anticipated that building the bridge might take a year but in fact it took just 11 months.

The Friends of The Union Chain Bridge describe the opening day on their website’s history section: “It was with great celebration and fanfare that the Union Chain Bridge was opened on the 26th July 1820.

‘‘Some of the most important engineers of the day were present, including the Scottish civil engineers Robert Stevenson and John Rennie. Its strength was demonstrated with a procession of loaded curricles followed by 600 eager spectators.

“At 146 metres (480ft) the span of the suspension chains were several times larger than anything for many years.

‘‘The bridge’s deck was made from timber, with a span of 120 metres (390ft). The bridge is embedded into the rock on the English side, but hung from a free-standing support tower on the Scottish side.

‘‘This design was finalised with consultation from both Rennie and Stevenson.”

So again a product of the union of English and Scottish brains. Brown went on to be the leading designer of suspension bridges, while his Union Chain Bridge has been renovated many times and is the subject of an ongoing restoration project.