Railway accommodation bridge at NZ 225 311

Summary

Railway accommodation bridge, 1885 for the Spennymoor Branch of the North Eastern Railway Company.

Reasons for Designation

This railway accommodation bridge (BIF/12) 1885 for the Spennymoor Branch of the North Eastern Railway Company, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* a good example of a late-C19 railway bridge associated with one of the major railway companies;
* it is well-executed in good quality stone that displays a good level of craftsmanship, seen especially in the finishes and detailing.

Group value:

* it benefits from a historic and functional group value with three other railway bridges on the same line.

History

This bridge (Engineer’s Line Reference (ELR) number BIF/12) was constructed for the North Eastern Railway (NER) to carry a footpath over its Bishop Auckland and Spennymoor Branch line (later known as the Bishop Auckland and Ferryhill Branch) north of Auckland Park. The line opened in 1885 and closed to regular passenger services in 1939, but remained open for freight in to the mid- to late 1950s. Today (2022) it forms part of a disused-railway walking trail.

Details

Railway accommodation bridge, 1885 for the Spennymoor Branch of the North Eastern Railway Company.

MATERIALS: snecked sandstone, mostly rock-faced and margined, with ashlar dressings; red brick arch

PLAN: single arched between abutments that rise from the sides of the cutting.

DESCRIPTION: the railway runs through a cutting, and the bridge comprises a single segmental arch 4.32m wide by 7.9m span by 4.72m high at the crown. It is set between abutments that rise from the cutting's sides. The eastern side of the cutting is marginally higher and the bridge deck slopes down slightly towards the west. The bridge appears to have been constructed to allow for dualling of the line, although only a single track was ever laid. The masonry is mostly rock-faced, and is margined on the abutment quoins, parapet end piers and elevations of the voussoirs; the inner faces of the parapets and soffits of the voussoirs are in contrast tooled and margined. The arch rings spring from skewback stones set above impost bands, and individual voussoirs have stepped ends that key directly in to the spandrels. The parapets are differentiated from the spandrels by a near-horizontal string course at deck level, and are topped by coping stones with a gently sloping upper surface, angled to the outside to help shed rain water. Parapets terminate in rectangular end piers that break forward on the elevations,and have ashlar pyramidal caps. Impost bands and string coursing are also ashlar, and both have a smooth, concave lower moulding, rising to a square middle and angled third section. All coping stones and end caps rise from a similar concave moulding.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

385630

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Websites
The Road, Rail and Parkland Bridges of Bishop Auckland, Co Durham, 4/2021: an assessment of the historical and archaeological evidence, M Jecock 2021., accessed 01-03-2022 from https://research.historicengland.org.uk/Report.aspx?i=16814&ru=%2fResults.aspx%3fp%3d1%26n%3d10%26t%3dBishop%2bAuckland%26ns%3d1

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