The Sankey Viaduct is a railway viaduct in

North West England North West England is one of nine official regions of England and consists of the ceremonial counties of England, administrative counties of Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside. The North West had a population of ...

. It is a designated Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

and has been described as being "the earliest major railway viaduct in the world". In 1826, the

Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company The Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR) was the first inter-city railway in the world. It opened on 15 September 1830 between the Lancashire towns of Liverpool and Manchester in England. It was also the first railway to rely exclusively ...

(L&MR) was authorised to construct the world's first intercity railway. One obstacle on the selected route between

Liverpool Liverpool is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the List of English districts by population, 10th largest English district by population and its E ...

and

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...

was the Sankey Valley. The company's principal engineer,

George Stephenson George Stephenson (9 June 1781 – 12 August 1848) was a British civil engineer and mechanical engineer. Renowned as the "Father of Railways", Stephenson was considered by the Victorians In the history of the United Kingdom and the ...

, designed the Sankey Viaduct for the double-track railway to traverse the valley and

Sankey Canal The Sankey Canal in North West England, initially known as the Sankey Brook Navigation and later the St Helens Canal, is a former industrial canal, which when opened in 1757 was England's first of the Industrial revolution, and the first moder ...

with sufficient clearance for the masts and sails of the

Mersey flat A Mersey flat is a type of doubled-ended barge, they were commonly used on the River Mersey. Construction Traditionally, the hull was built of oak and the deck was pitch pine. Some had a single mast, with a fore-and-aft rig, while some had an ad ...

s that used the canal. The viaduct was built between 1828 and 1830, although work on the structure did not finish until the middle of 1833. On 15 September 1830, the viaduct was opened along with the Liverpool & Manchester railway. During 2015,

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. Network Rail is an "arm's len ...

installed overhead line equipment as part of a wider electrification programme.

History

Background

Viaduct across the Sankey Valley, from Bury's Liverpool and Manchester Railway, 1831 - artfinder 122455

In 1826, the Act for the Liverpool & Manchester Railway (L&MR), the world's first intercity railway, was passed by

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...

was the company's principal engineer for the route between

and

. The route required crossing the Sankey valley west of

Newton-le-Willows Newton-le-Willows is a market town in the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, Merseyside, England. The population at the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census was 22,114. Newton-le-Willows is on the eastern edge of St Helens, south of Wigan an ...

, about halfway along the line. The Sankey valley contained two obstacles, the Sankey Brook and the

that was constructed to link the St Helens coalfield to the

River Mersey The River Mersey () is in North West England. Its name derives from Old English and means "boundary river", possibly referring to its having been a border between the ancient kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. For centuries it has formed par ...

. The engineered waterway could be regarded as the first canal built in England since

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

times. To traverse the Sankey Valley, Stephenson had to devise a route for the railway to pass without obstructing barges on the canals and maintain gradients for

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the loco ...

s using the route. The Sankey Brook Navigation Company objected to the Liverpool & Manchester Railway's intended route and insisted that any structure across the valley must provide a minimum clearance of 18.3 meters above the water to allow

fully-rigged A full-rigged ship or fully rigged ship is a sailing vessel's sail plan with three or more masts, all of them square-rigged. A full-rigged ship is said to have a ship rig or be ship-rigged. Such vessels also have each mast stepped in three seg ...

s to pass underneath. Stephenson's solution was to construct an embankment on the west side of the valley, roughly long, and then cross the brook and the canal on a

viaduct A viaduct is a specific type of bridge that consists of a series of arches, piers or columns supporting a long elevated railway or road. Typically a viaduct connects two points of roughly equal elevation, allowing direct overpass across a wide v ...

that met a smaller embankment on the eastern side. Stephenson designed the viaduct in conjunction with Thomas Longridge Gooch, his chief draughtsman. Constructed from yellow

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicat ...

and red brick, the viaduct is of nine round-headed arches carried on

piers Piers may refer to: * Pier, a raised structure over a body of water * Pier (architecture), an architectural support * Piers (name), a given name and surname (including lists of people with the name) * Piers baronets, two titles, in the baronetages ...

that incline sharply from the base towards the top. Its form is similar to the traditional designs of canal aqueducts.

Construction

Work commenced on the embankment for the western approach in June 1827. The embankment was constructed of more than 100,000 tonnes of

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay pa ...

marl Marl is an earthy material rich in carbonate minerals, clays, and silt. When hardened into rock, this becomes marlstone. It is formed in marine or freshwater environments, often through the activities of algae. Marl makes up the lower part ...

and

moss Mosses are small, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic division Bryophyta (, ) '' sensu stricto''. Bryophyta ('' sensu lato'', Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryophytes, which comprise liverworts, mosses, and ...

, which was compacted with brushwood. The clay was excavated from the sides of the valley. On completion, trees were planted to provide a natural camouflage for the structure. During the first half of 1828, William Allcard (1809–61) was appointed resident engineer for the mid-section of the Liverpool & Manchester railway, which included the Sankey Viaduct and Kenyon cutting. During spring 1828, work commenced on

piling A deep foundation is a type of foundation that transfers building loads to the earth farther down from the surface than a shallow foundation does to a subsurface layer or a range of depths. A pile or piling is a vertical structural elemen ...

for the viaduct's foundations, which was necessary because of the soft conditions of the ground. The splayed bases of the viaduct's piers are built on sandstone foundation slabs, which was

quarried A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to reduce their environ ...

from the nearby Olive Mount Cutting. Each slab was founded on top of around 200 timber piles, which were between long. In summer 1829, the piers were completed and work began on the superstructure. By February 1830, the parapet walls had been completed. The cost of the viaduct, which was known locally as the Nine Arches Viaduct, was between £45,200 and £46,000. On 15 September 1830, the viaduct was opened with the Liverpool & Manchester railway. Before its formal opening, a number of passengers had been transported across on special excursion trains. In July 1833, work on the structure included the addition of

coping Coping refers to conscious strategies used to reduce unpleasant emotions. Coping strategies can be cognitions or behaviours and can be individual or social. Theories of coping Hundreds of coping strategies have been proposed in an attempt to ...

s to the parapet walls. The viaduct stands between above Sankey Brook. It has nine semicircular arches of span, rise, and is of red brick with yellow sandstone facings. The arches are supported on eight rectangular piers and abutments at either end of the structure. The curved wing walls of the abutments retain the ends of the embankments. Projecting pilasters form rectangular cutwaters, which extend up the face of the piers to form part of the parapet walls. The width between the parapets is . The retaining walls of the western embankment have been strengthened by the addition of stay bolts, which extend deep inside the embankment and bolt fixings set onto the faces of the

retaining wall Retaining walls are relatively rigid walls used for supporting soil laterally so that it can be retained at different levels on the two sides. Retaining walls are structures designed to restrain soil to a slope that it would not naturally keep to ...

Concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most wid ...

has been applied to some of the vertical pilasters and areas of the masonry. During 1931, the Sankey Canal was abandoned north of the viaduct. In 1963, the last navigable section closed and the waterway was subsequently infilled; the canal beneath the viaduct was infilled during 2002. During February 1966, the viaduct received grade I

status, attributed to its "international significance being the earliest major railway viaduct in the world". During the first half of 2015,

installed overhead line equipment for the line's electrification."Sankey Viaduct (L&MR)."
''engineering-timelines.com'', Retrieved: 22 May 2018.

In popular culture

The Sankey Viaduct is the scene of an 1852 murder in '' The Railway Viaduct'' (2006), a detective mystery novel by

Keith Miles Keith Miles (born 1940) is a Welsh writer of historical fiction and mystery novels. He has also written children's books, radio and television dramas and stage plays. He is best known under the pseudonym Edward Marston, and has also written as M ...

writing as Edward Marston.

References

External links

* * {{Structurae , id = 20010747 , title = Sankey Viaduct
Images of the viaduct

Newton-le-Willows: Sankey Viaduct and Embankment
Grade I listed buildings in Merseyside Buildings and structures in the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens Grade I listed buildings in Cheshire Bridges completed in 1830 Railway viaducts in Cheshire Railway viaducts in Merseyside Grade I listed railway bridges and viaducts 1830 establishments in England Newton-le-Willows