Concorde

Oban is the only town in the world to have been deliberately exposed to the effects of supersonic flight. The prolonged test programme of the Concorde used a flight path which passed directly over Oban and no other centre of population. There were few official complaints at the time but the sonic shock must have been partly responsible for the later spate of cracked and bulging walls, now rebuilt.

In St John’s Cathedral in the town, some stabilisation work was undertaken in 1988 and remnants of the array of monitoring equipment installed to record the effects of Concorde’s trial flights can still be spotted in the form of glass 'tell-tales' on some of the walls.

More information on visiting the area can be found here.