Martholme Viaduct is a railway bridge near

Great Harwood Great Harwood is a town in the Hyndburn district of Lancashire, England, located north east of Blackburn and adjacent to the Ribble Valley. Great Harwood is part of the "Three Towns" conurbation along with the towns of Clayton-le-Moors and Ris ...

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...

, north-western England. It was built from 1870 and opened in 1877 after construction was beset by landslips. It closed in 1954 and is now a cycle way. It is a Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

History

The viaduct was built to carry the Great Harwood Loop (also known as the North Lancashire Loop) of the East Lancashire Line, owned by the

Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR) was a major History of rail transport in Great Britain, British railway company before the Railways Act 1921, 1923 Grouping. It was Incorporation (business)#Incorporation in the United Kingdom, incorpo ...

(LYR). It crosses the

River Ribble The River Ribble runs through North Yorkshire and Lancashire in Northern England. It starts close to the Ribblehead Viaduct in North Yorkshire, and is one of the few that start in the Yorkshire Dales and flow westwards towards the Irish Sea (t ...

between

and Read and was designed by Sturges Meek, the LYR's chief engineer. Construction began in 1870 but was beset with problems and the line did not open until. The line required deep cuttings at one end, the spoil from which was to be used to build the embankments needed at the other end, which required it to be transported a distance of around three miles (five kilometres). A large coalfield is located underneath the route and a

colliery Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extra ...

was located near the site of the river crossing, which led to concerns about the stability of the ground. Thus, the railway originally proposed a lightweight wooden viaduct but it eventually purchased the coal measures at the insistence of the engineering contractors, Thomas Stone & Son, which enabled a stone viaduct to be built with confidence. Subsidence was a problem nonetheless—the embankments on either side of the viaduct continually slipped, including on one occasion shortly before the line was due to open, when the rails were carried away. Most of the line closed in 1957 and the viaduct with it. The remainder of the line closed in 1964.

Description

The viaduct is on a sharp curve. It is built from snecked

gritstone Gritstone or grit is a hard, coarse-grained, siliceous sandstone. This term is especially applied to such sandstones that are quarried for building material. British gritstone was used for millstones to mill flour, to grind wood into pulp for ...

(local sandstone) and faced with rock with brick

soffit A soffit is an exterior architectural feature, generally the horizontal, aloft underside of the roof edge. Its archetypal form, sometimes incorporating or implying the projection of rafters or trusses over the exterior of supporting walls, is t ...

s. It has ten semi-circular arches, each of span, and reaches a maximum height of above the valley. The arches spring from impost bands. Above them is a solid

parapet A parapet is a barrier that is an upward extension of a wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/brea ...

. The viaduct is now part of a walking and cycling trail. It is a Grade II

, a status which provides it with legal protection, first designated in March 1984.

References

{{Borough of Ribble Valley buildings Bridges completed in 1877 Buildings and structures in Hyndburn Buildings and structures in Ribble Valley Grade II listed buildings in Lancashire Great Harwood Stone bridges in England Railway viaducts in Lancashire 1877 establishments in England

History

Description

See also

References