Bust of John Smeaton
Smeaton Road is named, as are most of the roads on the Churchfields Estate, after a famous engineer. John Smeaton (1724-1792) designed Eddystone Lighthouse, Aberdeen bridge and Charlestown Harbour in St Austell.
Update: There is podcast (downloadable MP3) of a lecture about John Smeaton called ‘Surveying the scene, engineering the machine: the drawings of John Smeaton” on the website of the Royal Society. Although the lecture is obviously aimed at a spcialized audience, it is interesting enough. One of the stories recounted is that, as a child, Smeaton made a water pump. He tested it on the garden pond, and pumped it dry, sadly, killing all the fish.
The Royal Society podcast page is here: Podcasts of Library events
The Smeaton MP3 is here: Smeaton.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object)
Further Update: I took the picture on my mobile phone when I was at the Institute of Chartered Engineers at One George Street, London.
[...] the Churchfields estate are named after scientists or enigineers, of varying levels of fame (e.g. Smeaton Road, Watt Road and Telford [...]