Stockton & Darlington Railway: Belts Gill embankment, lower part of the northern Etherley Incline

Summary

Substantial earthwork embankment and associated structural and buried remains forming the lower 0.3km part of the northern Etherley Incline, part of George Stephenson’s 1825 main line for the Stockton & Darlington Railway.

Reasons for Designation

The Stockton & Darlington Railway: Belts Gill embankment, the lower part of the northern Etherley Incline, is included on the Schedule for the following principal reasons:

* Period: part of the internationally influential and pioneering railway that opened in 1825, engineered by George Stephenson, popularly known as the ‘Father of the Railways’;

* Survival: a very-well preserved and impressive embankment spanning a valley, the highest built for the 1825 line, being one of the most substantial sections of engineered railway line built nationally by that date;

* Group value: with the upper part and summit of the Etherley Incline to the south.

History

Although the Stockton & Darlington Railway (S&DR), opened 1825, is most famous for its pioneering use of steam locomotives, until the opening of the Shildon tunnel in 1842, these were only used from Shildon eastwards. To the west of Shildon, the main line consisted of two pairs of inclined planes to go over the Brusselton and Etherley ridges, linked by a short, level section which was horse-hauled to cross the Gaunless river valley. In this respect the S&DR employed and built-on the technology developed by various colliery railways and wagonways around Tyneside. Through the S&DR’s policy of sharing information with visiting engineers and railway promoters, the railway came to significantly influence the development of other early railways both in England and abroad. Many railways built in the 1820s and 1830s also used rope-hauled inclines combined with steam locomotives, many of which were designed by the S&DR’s Chief Engineer, George Stephenson (1781-1848) who became popularly regarded as ‘the Father of the Railways’. However, credit is also due to Timothy Hackworth (1786-1850), the S&DR’s Superintendent of Locomotives, the railway’s resident engineer, who not only hosted visiting engineers, but also made many alterations and improvements to both locomotives and the inclines.

The earliest documented railways in England, the early C17 timber-railed wagonways in Shropshire, appear to have included at least one self-acting inclined plane (also termed a gravity incline): this operated by using the weight of descending full wagons to haul empty wagons to the summit. Clearly such a system was only workable where loads only needed to be transported downhill. Two centuries later, bi-directional inclines became practical with the application of steam power, using stationary engines housed in engine houses to haul wagons up inclines, the earliest being the Lancaster Canal tramroad near Preston of 1803, followed in 1805 by the Black Fell incline near Birtley, Co. Durham. Stephenson’s design for the S&DR’s Brusselton Incline appears to have been the first instance whereby a single stationary engine was designed to serve two inclines to allow a railway to cross a ridge. By the 1840s, steam locomotive design and railway engineering had improved to the extent that new routes were built without the need for rope-hauled inclines, although many existing inclines continued to be operated, some persisting into the second half of the C20, with electrical haulage engines replacing steam.

The northern end of the S&DR was designed to serve the pits of Witton Park Colliery which exploited the coal reserves of Witton Castle, the estate owned by William Chaytor (1771-1847), one of the founding promoters of the S&DR. The substantial earthwork embankment crossing Belts Gill was constructed to serve these collieries, forming the lowest section of the northern Etherley Incline. The line continued 0.7km northwards to William Pit, beyond the monument, as a horse-drawn railway with short spurs laid to other colliery shafts. This included Phoenix Pit (immediately north-east of the later settlement of Phoenix Row) from which the first 12 chaldrons (wagons of coal) were led at 7am on the 27 September 1825, opening the railway line for business. The railway dramatically reduced the transportation costs of Witton Park Colliery, formerly reliant on packhorses, with the pits around the railway being largely worked out by the 1840s. The Etherley Incline is thought to have become disused following the accidental death of the Etherley engineman John Greener in 1843, this section of line serving Witton Park and Low Etherley being effectively superseded by the opening of the Bishop Auckland & Weardale Railway to the east in November 1843. The incline was officially closed on 13 October 1858.

The route that Stephenson laid out for the S&DR was fundamentally different to that proposed in 1819 by George Overton (1774-1827) which had been longer and much more meandering, designed for horse-haulage along a gently descending route from Witton Park. Instead, Stephenson’s route made extensive use of engineering solutions to create a straighter, more direct route: the embankment across Belts Gill being one of the most substantial engineering constructions of the original line, one of the most substantial railway embankments built nationally by 1825.

Details

PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS: a substantial earthwork embankment forming part of a well-graded inclined plane. Passing through the base of the embankment is a stone-built culvert.

DESCRIPTION: the embankment takes the lower part of the northern Etherley Incline across the head of a valley formed by Belts Beck which flows eastwards. The top of the embankment forms a track bed about 6m wide, the incline rising gradually around 10m from the southern end of Phoenix Row to the edge of Low Etherley to the south. Where the embankment crosses the beck, it is some 10m high and 60m wide at the base. The culvert, which carries the beck through the embankment at this point, is round-arched and complete. On its west side, the water flow is directed into the culvert via a short, stone-lined water course. On the east side of the embankment, just south of the culvert, there is a ramp formed into the side of the embankment down to the adjacent field

EXTENT OF SCHEDULING: this includes the full extent of the embankment crossing Belts Gill, including a short projection on the west side to include the stone-lined water course leading to the culvert through the embankment. At the northern end, the area is drawn to extend to the edge of an access road at the rear of Phoenix Row, following, but not including the fence lines either side of the track bed. This means that the marshalling yard at the foot of the incline, now largely overlain by the houses of Phoenix Row, is not included. Nor is the site of the tally cabin, from which the operations at the base of the incline were overseen, thought to be evidenced by a scar line in the gable end of 1 Phoenix Row. The south end of the monument is drawn to follow, but not include, the built-up access road to the houses of West View and Hillside, even though this access road follows the route that was taken by a spur off the railway serving the former Old Etherley Colliery. The house and garden, 38 Low Etherley, which was built around 1980 within the original scheduled area, is also not included in the scheduling.

Further extensive remains of the original 1825 main line of the S&DR are included in separate scheduled monuments.

EXCLUSIONS: all fence, gate and signposts, interpretation panels and their supports, litter bins and other street furniture such as benches are excluded from the scheduling, although the ground beneath them is included.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

DU 108

Legacy System:

RSM - OCN

Sources

Books and journals
Mountford, Colin, Rope & Chain Haulage, (2013)

Websites
Archaeo-Environment for Durham CC: ‘The 1825 Stockton & Darlington Railway: Historic Environment Audit, Appendix 1 Witton Park to St Helen Auckland’, (2016)., accessed 26 May 2022 from https://www.sdr1825.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/APPENDIX-1-2016-11-30-Management-Witton-Park-to-West-Auckland.pdf

End of official list entry

All text content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 , except where otherwise stated. Any supplied maps are © Crown Copyright [and database rights] 2026 OS AC0000815036 and may not be reproduced without permission.