Old North Road Bridge, HUL4/13

Summary

Railway basket arched underbridge designed to accommodate the Great North Road, constructed for the Leeds & Selby Railway between 1830-4 to the designs of Walker & Burges.

Reasons for Designation

Old North Road Bridge, HUL 4/13 of c1830-34 by James Walker of Walker & Burges for Leeds & Selby Railway, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Historic interest: as an original underbridge built between 1830 and 1834 on the pioneering, first phase Leeds & Selby Railway;
* Engineer: designed by James Walker, a renowned C19 engineer, who constructed the line with a four-track bed and distinctive, single-span overbridges with unprecedented spans of 60ft (18.2m) rather than the standard 30ft (9.1m) span and twin-span bridges used by other early and later railway engineers;
* Architectural interest: as a single-span, basket-arch bridge demonstrating a high level of craftsmanship in its construction, detailing, and dressing;
* Intactness: the bridge is largely unaltered.

History

In the early C19 Leeds was a major textile manufacturing centre and needed a good transport connection to the sea for the import of raw wool and export of finished cloth. The pre-existing river and canal system to Hull was slow and expensive and a railway link from Leeds to Selby and then onwards to Hull was considered to have potential to improve the transport infrastructure, and could also benefit local coal mine and quarry owners.

In 1825 George Stephenson was asked to survey a possible route to Selby. However, financial uncertainties led to the project being postponed and Stephenson concentrated on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway instead. In 1829 the engineer James Walker was asked to review the Stephenson proposal. Walker (1781-1862) is best known for designing harbours, docks and lighthouses, having been appointed consulting engineer to Trinity House in 1825. However, he also played an important role in the early development of the railway system. In 1829 he went into partnership with his assistant, Alfred Burges (1797-1886, father of architect William Burges), though Burges does not appear to have been involved in Walker's railway projects. Having resurveyed the route Walker suggested some adjustments to enable the use of horse or locomotive power without the inclusion of inclined planes worked with stationary steam engines. The proposed route ran from Leeds to the River Ouse at Selby via Crossgates, Garforth and Milford, a distance of just over 19 miles. Walker also suggested that the plan put before Parliament allowed sufficient land to be purchased for the construction of a four track line. It was authorised by Parliament in 1830, four months before the pioneering Liverpool & Manchester Railway opened, and was fully opened by December 1834.

Walker acted as consulting engineer, and in common with other early railway builders, had a resident engineer for the day-to-day supervision and some of the detailed design, using Thomas Dyson, and, from 1832, George Smith. Nowell & Sons of Dewsbury and Homer & Pratt of Goole were the two contractors. The scale of the project was unusual because of the decision to provide four tracks. This resulted in a trackbed of 66ft (20.1m) rather than the typical two track line which had a trackbed of 30ft (9.1m); even Brunel designing for his broad-gauge track used that dimension. The extra width gave the railway a quite different character from the simple lines and waggonways that had preceded it. The most distinctive characteristic of the line was the design for the overbridges, which had to span the four tracks rather than the usual two tracks. Walker did not use a twin-span bridge, but designed a bridge with a single, basket arch (three-centred arch where the height is less than half the span) and an unprecedented span of around 60ft (18.2m). In the event only a twin-track line was laid, and in many cases one side of the arch is obscured by the earth embankment. The bridges were built of stone with the exception of a brick underbridge at Barwick Road, Garforth, and two iron bridges, one of which survives at Crawshaw Woods.

This bridge was constructed between 1830-4 and is exceptionally wide to accommodate the Great North Road which ran through Micklefield.

Details

Railway basket arched underbridge designed to accommodate the Great North Road, constructed for the Leeds & Selby Railway between 1830-4 to the designs of Walker & Burges.

MATERIALS: local sandstone.

PLAN: single-span with provision for four tracks.

One of a sequence of bridges designed by Walker & Burges for the Leeds & Selby Railway, which share a common design. The arch springs from a tooled ashlar impost band and has stepped, rusticated and v-jointed ashlar voussoirs which continue to the underside. The bridge is flanked by raked and angled wing walls of squared and coursed quarry-faced masonry with ashlar coping. The parapet is set upon an ashlar string course and has distinctive, pronounced horizontal tooling terminating in similarly detailed curved piers characteristic of this line.

EXCLUSIONS: Pursuant to s.1 (5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that the modern metal railing attached to one of the original parapets and the raised platform structure are not of special architectural or historic interest.

Sources

Websites
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Walker, James (1781-1862), Civil Engineer, by Dennis Smith, accessed 18 November 2014 from http://www.oxfordnb.com/

Other
Suzannah Meade, Richard Pollard and Robert Thorne, NTP-E Statement of History and Significance: East of Leeds. Revised Draft. Prepared for Network Rail., December 2013,

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