Summary
Earthwork and buried remains of a locomotive-hauled section of George Stephenson’s 1825 main line for the Stockton & Darlington Railway, this section being abandoned in 1852 with the land absorbed into the parkland of Preston Hall, now a public park.
Reasons for Designation
The Stockton & Darlington Railway: earthworks of the 1825 main line and associated features within Preston Park, is included on the Schedule for the following principal reasons:
Period: a locomotive-hauled section of the internationally influential and pioneering railway that opened in 1825 and was engineered by George Stephenson, popularly known as the ‘Father of the Railways’.
Survival: clear, extensive earthworks of the 1825 main line with a range of associated features that were not modified by later C19 or subsequent engineering works, unlike other sections of the line that remained in use beyond the 1850s.
Potential: good in-situ survival of archaeological remains as demonstrated by 2003-2008 archaeological investigations, which included very small-scale sample excavation.
Documentation: the way that archaeological survey clearly demonstrates the existence of sidings and other features of the railway not recorded on the 1846 Harris plan.
History
The Stockton & Darlington Railway (S&DR) opened on 27 September 1825 with a 43km long mainline extending between Witton Park Colliery (north of Etherley in County Durham), via New Shildon and Darlington, to terminate on the River Tees at Stockton. The company pioneered the development of locomotive-hauled mainline railways and directly influenced the establishment of other early railways both in England and abroad by actively sharing information with visiting engineers.
The Welsh tramway engineer, George Overton (1774-1827), had surveyed a route in 1818-1821 intended for horse haulage, this gaining parliamentary approval in 1821. However, George Stephenson (1781-1848) re-engineered the route for steam locomotives for all except the western 7.5km of the line where the Brusselton and Etherley ridges were crossed using steam-powered, rope-hauled inclines. Stephenson employed extensive engineering with cuttings and embankments to produce a much straighter route than proposed by Overton, although the section that forms the scheduled monument is one of those straight sections where Stephenson followed Overton’s route. Stephenson’s plans were approved by Parliament in 1823, the Act also adding provisions for the carriage of passengers in addition to permission to carry goods and minerals secured under the earlier Act. The first rail was laid, at Stockton, on 23 May 1822, with 35km completed by the following summer, probably including the section covered by this scheduling. Around the same time that the railway line was under construction, former farmland extending between the line and the river was being landscaped as parkland for Preston Hall, built from 1820 for David Burton Fowler, one of the S&DR’s shareholders. It is speculated that sidings and what is interpreted as a short platform surviving as earthworks within the area of the monument were used to service Preston Hall, although clear documentary evidence for this remains unidentified. It is known that the S&DR allowed private sidings to be connected to the main line and that these were not necessarily recorded in surviving documents. Curving boundaries extending eastwards from the southernmost area of the monument hint at further sidings that have not left identified earthworks, and so are not included in the scheduling. Such sidings may have been used for the construction of the hall and served a quarry active in the early C19.
One of the stories from the opening day of the railway concerned a stagecoach with sixteen passengers pulled by four horses which attempted to race Locomotion hauling a train carrying 600 passengers and eighty tons of goods. This occurred just outside Stockton and is thought to have been along Yarm Road and is likely to have included the stretch that is included in the scheduling.
The S&DR proved to be a financial success, carrying many times the volume of goods traffic than was originally expected, as well as generating a significant and completely new demand for passenger services, this initially provided by private operators using horse-haulage. As originally built, the line was single-tracked with passing loops to facilitate two-way working, the eastern end of the line being laid using oak sleeper blocks. The original wayleave for the railway (the land that was purchased to construct the line) is thought to have been defined by steep sided ditches besides hedge lines, some sections still surviving as extant features within the monument, some sections of ditch since infilled. In the early 1830s, with increasing volumes of traffic, the line was re-laid with dual tracks set on stone sleeper blocks. Timber sleepers linking the rails, were generally used by the S&DR from the 1840s onwards, replacing individual sleeper blocks. The Tithe Map (1839) does not show details of the railway line, just the boundaries. Unfortunately, no copy of the much more detailed 1839 survey by Thomas Dixon has been identified for the area of the monument (Dixon’s survey plans for most of the rest of the S&DR lines in existence in 1839 are held by the National Archives). A detailed survey dated 1846, by John Harris, does survive. This shows the track layout at that time, including sidings and points, although surviving earthworks within the monument suggest that a number of sidings had been taken up, these earlier sidings probably being privately owned. In 1852, the S&DR mainline was connected, at Eaglescliffe, to the newly opened Leeds Northern Railway between Northallerton and Stockton. This ran parallel to the S&DR’s original line, 0.25km to the west, the original line being abandoned, the tracks lifted before the 1855 survey of the Ordnance Survey 1:10560 map. The area of this scheduling was subsequently absorbed into the parkland of Preston Hall which became a public park after the Second World War.
In 2003-2008, Tees Archaeology undertook a survey of the line within Preston Park from North Lodge southwards, along with three small excavation trenches as a community archaeology project, published in 2020. This securely identified a loop siding (possibly dual-tracked) on the east side of the line just south of South Lodge. Only the start of the siding, at its southern end, is depicted on the 1846 Harris plan, most of the loop siding is not depicted suggesting that it had gone out of use by 1846. Just south of North Lodge, on the west side of the mainline embankment, the survey identified what was interpreted as a platform, with a ramp running between this and the mainline. The position of this ramp is marked on the 1846 Harris plan as a short, hedge-lined trackway extending between a level crossing on the railway and a gate onto Yarm Road. What the survey interpreted as a platform is not depicted by Harris. An alternative interpretation is that this earthwork feature is instead the embankment for the southern end of a siding that divided off from the mainline around 300m to the north: a short, probably truncated siding being shown on the 1846 Harris survey just north of Preston Lane. Earthworks have been levelled by agriculture to the north of Preston Lane which is why the lane forms the northern boundary of the monument. Slight earthworks survive between Preston Lane and North Lodge that are consistent with being evidence of the southward continuation of this siding, North Lodge being built across its line. The ramp and platform are overlain by a series of north-south ridges that extend some 70m to the south, these are of unknown origin, although they have been interpreted by Tees Archaeology as horse-ploughed ridge and furrow cultivation post-dating the railway, this appearing to be unlikely because of the small size of the area. Opposite the southern end of these ridges, on the eastern side of the embankment for the main line, there is a long low mound that may represent a former railway platform that was not mapped by Harris. A feature that is marked on the Harris plan is an accommodation bridge taking a trackway underneath the railway line at a point just west of North Lodge. There is a break in the earthworks of the railway embankment in this position. Just to the north, Harris marks a small square building, footings of which still appear to survive.
The three very small-scale excavation trenches opened as part of the Tees Archaeology investigations identified that the railway embankments were built up in layers of clay without first removing the topsoil from the original ground surface. Holes left by removed sleeper stones were identified, the line appearing not to have been ballasted but with clear indications of the ground between the rail-positions being worn down, this being interpreted as evidence of horse haulage. To the sides of the embankments, deposits of ash, clinker and coal evidence the use of steam locomotives along the line. A cast iron marker post, which presumably had fallen over and become buried, was also uncovered.
Details
PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS: the earthwork and buried remains of a section of the S&DR mainline opened in 1825 that extends along the western side of Preston Park, including buried and earthwork remains of sidings and other related features including a possible railway platform.
DESCRIPTION: the scheduled monument covers a 1km long section of the original route of the S&DR that survives with extensive upstanding earthworks within woodland along the western side of the public park, Preston Park. Elsewhere to the north and south, outside of the area of the scheduling, the route is discernible in places, but is fragmented and obscured by later land-use.
Through the area of the monument, from south to north, the track bed rises on a 1:140 gradient, mostly on a low embankment that typically stands to around 0.5m high, but, because of undulating ground surfaces, stands up to about 1.2m high, this higher section being just north of South Lodge. For the southernmost 100m, the track bed is not embanked but instead lies within a shallow cutting up to around 0.5m deep. The mainline track bed is generally around 7-8m wide: the typical width on the S&DR elsewhere for double-tracked lines. Boundary ditches defining the original extent for the wayleave for the line are typically around 0.3-0.5m deep and 1-2m across, although many sections (especially on the east side of the line) survive as infilled features.
Starting at the southern end of the area of scheduling, the mainline track bed, within a shallow cutting, is about 9m wide (wide enough for a double line and a single, diverging siding as shown on the 1846 Harris plan). From a point about 90m north of the southern end of the area of the scheduling, where on the Harris plan the siding is shown as ending, the track bed for the siding clearly continues, separating off the eastern side of the main line track bed, a shallow ditch separating the two track beds. That of the siding runs level, the main line slowly rising so that after about 200m the siding is track bed is about 0.3m lower than that of the main line, both track beds now being raised embankments. The siding has also broadened by this stage, being about 9m wide (sufficient for two lines with generous clearance), wider than the bed for the main line at this point, which is about 7-8m wide. Northwards the siding converges back towards the main line, probably originally joining in the general area of South Lodge where the line is cut through by the later driveway to Preston Hall. The track bed for the main line is most obvious between the two driveways to Preston Hall, forming a clear raised embankment. About 130m south of North Lodge there is a raised narrow earthwork standing about 0.3m high extending for about 30m along the eastern side of the track bed. This is interpreted as the remains of a possible platform, possibly a private station halt for Preston Hall. Around 70m south of North Lodge there are the earthworks of a level crossing that is shown on the Harris plan, most clearly seen as a ramp descending at right angles to the main line towards the road to the west. On the north side of this ramp there is another raised embankment that is interpreted as the southern end of a siding. The track beds for both the main line and the siding can be identified in the woodland to the north of North Lodge, mainly seen via deposits of clinker, but also in part as low embankments. Footings of what is identified as the small square building marked on the 1846 Harris Plan also survive in this area. A clear gap in the embankment for the main line coincides with the position of where a track passed under a bridge carrying the railway. This track must have been sunken to get beneath the line, subsequently being infilled, the lower parts of the bridge abutments potentially still surviving as buried archaeological remains.
EXTENT OF SCHEDULING: this includes the full extent of the earthworks and associated buried remains of the S&DR mainline and associated features lying along the western side of Preston Park, extending between Preston Lane to the north and the southern end of Preston Park at the boundary to 501 Yarm Road. The two lodges and their immediate enclosing gardens and adjacent driveways into Preston Park are all not included in the scheduling, dividing the area of the scheduling into three separate parcels. Also not included are the outbuildings and garden of 1 Preston Lane that extend over the track bed of the main line. Land to the west of this, at the northern end of the monument, is included to cover surviving earthworks of the siding that is considered to have run along the west side of the main line to just south of North Lodge. The western boundary of all three parcels follows the eastern pavement edge along Yarm Road, thus including the hedged boundary to Preston Park which is considered to largely originate in the boundary used and perhaps established by the S&DR. The eastern boundary follows fence lines or edges of woodland as marked by the Ordnance Survey where possible, however in two places this line is straightened between identifiable mapped points to avoid extending more than 15m from the edge of the trackbed whilst ensuring that the full extent of the embankment and the earthwork or infilled remains of the S&DR’s boundary ditch are included, along with a minimum 2m margin for the support and protection of the remains. The speculative routes of sidings extending eastwards from the southernmost area of the monument, hinted at by curving boundaries on maps, are not included in the scheduling.
EXCLUSIONS: The small structures associated with gas and water mains and all C20 and later fences, walls, tarmac and pavement surfaces, signposts, bollard posts, and litter bins within the area of the monument are excluded from the scheduling, but the ground beneath is included.
