Great railway bores

Britain’s ten most architecturally significant tunnel portals of Britain’s railways - as nominated by TV presenter and railway historian TIM DUNN

WHOOMPH! The pressure in the carriage changes rapidly. Chances are, you only know a tunnel is upon you once you’re actually inside it - they’re experienced from within and rarely observed from the outside.

I’ve spent the past two years or so researching the architecture of many of Britain’s historic railway structures - stations, bridges, depots, towers, hotels, signal boxes, cabins, tunnels… the lot ( RAIL 904).

But it’s the latter - tunnels - that have caused me the greatest problem, for there is so little written on the great works of applied art that are our railway tunnel portals.

Much has been written on the engineering triumphs of the bores that run between (how long, through what rock, the gradient, the diameter), but almost nothing on the style.

So, in researching this article I am indebted to two works in particular: Britain’s Historic Railway Buildings (Biddle, 2003) and the 2016 thesis by Dr H J Pragnell, Early British Railway Tunnels 1830-1870.

There are more than 1,500 railway tunnels in Britain and the majority are still in use, carrying working tracks beneath Britain’s most inconvenient geographic features.

But we never really see their entrances - we speed through their outer walls in a second and often they are in cuttings far away from view. And yet it’s the style of those yawning mouths that are the interface between our world and the subterranean.

The true golden age of railway tunnel architecture was between 1830 and 1870 - at that time of ‘Railway Mania’. As Pragnell notes, post-1870 there is a constructional simplicity as the railways settled down as more stable institutions, but it is the 40 years leading up to 1870 that give us the greatest variety of legacy that we can experience today.

But why give a tunnel mouth any decoration whatsoever?

From the late Georgian period through to the early Victorian, architecture as an applied art was often used to hide the constructional forms of engineering. It’s seen everywhere - the art of architecture makes engineering acceptable.

It’s not just a desire to hide the functional. We must also remember that the pioneering railways had to convince landowners, investors and the travelling public that they were safe, permanent and not going to spoil. By borrowing images of antiquity and the visuals of majesty and legend, the promotors of land-gobbling, fire-breathing-devil, ironhorse-roads ensured that their shocking new ways at least appeared to be rooted in an acceptable past.

And if it wasn’t Classical antiquity that inspired the tunnel designs, then it was usually Gothic.

Praddle sums up why: “If railway companies were looking for an image of strength then the strongest type of structure is a castle which is, after all, meant to be impregnable. The public needed to be reassured that a tunnel was sound and would not collapse. It further suggested a hint of romance and mystery.”

In this period there was an obsession with

grottoes and caves, and the idea of exploring these new romantic castles by train almost adds to the excitement of a railway trip.

Biddle even notes how Brunel, after observing how one retaining wall had part-collapsed during the construction of one of the GWR’s Bristol tunnels during heavy rains, “decided to leave it like that and planted it with ivy to represent a ruined medieval gateway”.

Tunnels were very much now part of the experience that the early railways could conjure up, as the world began to take to trains.

This was the age of the railway pioneer, and like so many mid-19th century pioneers they needed to be seen to be conquering a hostile world. Grandeur, solidarity, stability, sycophancy, mystique and romantic symbolism all played their parts in the development of Britain’s railway tunnel architecture.

We are fortunate that today we still have so many looked after by various organisations such as Network Rail, Historic England, the Railway Heritage Trust and a myriad of private and public bodies.

So, on to my Top Ten. You might not agree with them all, but I believe these are the ten most interesting entrances to big bores in Britain now.

Primrose Hill

First up in this Top Ten are the original portals of Primrose Hill, which sit astride the former London & Birmingham Railway (now West Coast Main Line) tracks just outside Euston.

This is where Robert Stephenson’s hand was forced by the landowner, Eton College, well in advance of construction.

Those who know the lie of the land in this part of London know that it is not especially tricky, but the College ensured that a bored route was pursued, rather than a frankly much easier cut-and-cover tunnel or cutting.

Not just that, but as Biddle notes, the College specified that the eastern (London) end must have “a substantial and ornamental Facing of Brickwork or Masonry”.

It’s accepted that while Stephenson was the engineer, the architectural design was taken care of by the eminently capable W H Budden, Stephenson’s one-time secretary.

Here, as on so many structures that the railways built (and indeed as within many major architectural studios today), a righthand person or two was engaged to fill in the details of their leader’s grand, sweeping vision.

And what a vision it was. Broad, curved retaining walls originally flanked the southern portal, with a perfectly semi-circular arch between, chunky bases, and commanding towers either side in the Italianate style.

The Italianate style had even become known ( briefly) as the “railroad style” in architecture journals of the day.

You can still see the characteristic lowpitched roofs and deep eaves all over the UK rail network - David Mocatta’s Brighton station, Tite’s old Southampton Terminus, and Brunel’s pumping houses in Devon are three good examples.

Italianate was essentially a simplification of many Classical architectural principles used in grander buildings, but its styling enabled the use of cheap brick and castings rather than stone, and less learned engineers were able to assemble them into very pleasing forms.

You might have seen engravings of this eastern portal, perhaps slightly overstating its size compared with the navvies working on it (as was the norm at the time), but those illustrations ensured its fame and place in history.

Within a few years, the double tracks

became a bottleneck and an almost identical bore with new portals was completed alongside. That slightly diminishes the singular mouth’s impact, but they are still truly works of art.

Both pop out of the hillside just short of South Hampstead station. And if you’ve travelled the Chiltern route into Marylebone, you’ll have spotted the slightly more plain vermiculated portals on the western end of the tunnel as you pass above the West Coast Main Line (vermiculated refers to those worm-like organic-looking carvings often seen in large blocks of stone).

That eastern portal at Primrose Hill was just what Stephenson and the London & Birmingham wanted - another grand triumphal arch for the customers of this new Great British navigation to pass through.

And, of course, it was one more triumph of modern man taming the landscape - somewhere between the Greek Revival-style ‘arch’ at Euston and its matching terminus at Curzon Street, both designed by Philip Hardwick.

With the completion of Euston’s Doric arch, the London & Birmingham applauded that it would “necessarily become the Grand Avenue for travelling between the Metropolis and the midland and northern parts of the kingdom”.

So, it is here, having been specified in 1833 and completed in 1837, that we have one of the most monumentally important main line railway tunnel mouths in the world.

Kilsby (just up the line, also by Stephenson and which I will come to later) is important, but it probably didn’t have the widespread fame that the Italianate portals of Primrose Hill once did. So much of what followed from the drawing boards of others will have been designed with the demands, effort and grandeur of Primrose Hill in the back of their minds.

Milford

If Primrose Hill was grand and Italianate, Milford’s south portal is grand and solid. But unusually, as Biddle notes, the northern portal is a “rich Saxon arch” - and perhaps it even shows Norman influences, too.

Milford’s northern entrance, extraordinary in its detailing and its grandeur, is thought to be the work of Frances Thompson, railway architect extraordinaire. Responsible for so many structures, often in partnership with Robert Stephenson, Thompson’s legacy remains with us today - not least in tunnel and station design, but also that of Derby’s own railway town.

Seven huge concentric semi-circular rings of stone surround the northern end, and quite rightly are Grade 2-listed by conservation body Historic England. They truly are extraordinary - almost like a child’s rainbow waiting to be coloured in.

Milford is fascinating for its rarity of style (although a very similar example exists near Audley End), and it remains visible today to those who venture nearby and cross the line by an overbridge.

Bangor

Bangor, at the entrance to the North Wales town, is not particularly exceptional from an engineering point of view. But it’s extremely unusual in its architectural form - Egyptian.

Egyptian-influenced buildings (mainly mausoleums, but occasional factories and meeting houses in England) spread across Britain through the early 1800s.

The style reappeared in the 1920s, following the popularity of Egyptian art after Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb.

With weighty lintels and cornices, tapered frames and angular forms, few notable British railway buildings picked up on the style - but three that did were very close together.

The most important survivors of this trio are the striking dual portals of Bangor Tunnel - designed by Frances Thompson (see also Milford Tunnel), who was responsible for many structures along the then-Chester & Holyhead Railway.

His nearby Belmont Tunnel had not dissimilar portals but was rebuilt in an enlargement exercise, while the crowning Egyptian glories were what I might term a ‘suspended tunnel’ - the Britannia Bridge over the Menai Straits. A great tower at each end formed the portals to the tubular structure and the passengers’ feeling of being subterranean, although that bridge is gone now with just its massive lions to roar at oncoming trains.

Bangor Tunnel remains one of the last monuments to Egyptian design on the network, and a design style that found favour in so many places elsewhere.

Bramhope Bramhope’s north portal is the first in this Top Ten to have been designed in the neo-Gothic style. Taking the four years until 1849 to be constructed, the two-mile tunnel was finished when the Gothic renaissance was at its peak, with the intricate design of the northern portal created to satisfy the demands of local landowner William Rhodes.

Three castellated (with battlements) towers stand sentry here, with one being particularly large. This is said to have been used by

Rhodes as a belvedere, and (according to some sources) by railway staff for some time after opening.

Demonstrating most clearly the impact that landowners had on railway architecture, and the desire that companies had to please, it’s interesting to note that even today the keystone above the mouth features a carved portrait thought to be of Rhodes gazing down on every train that passes between Leeds and Harrogate.

The parapet features a carved fish, sheep’s fleece and wheatsheaf - the heraldic device of the Leeds & Thirsk Railway, which commissioned the line in the first place. Our railways’ history is writ large, here.

Its southern portal is less well-known, being slightly simpler. But Bramhope’s architectural legacy doesn’t end here - the tunnel’s epic construction led to the tragic death of 24 workers, and a memorial to their lives was erected in nearby Otley churchyard by the contractor, James Bray.

One of the most notable peacetime monuments to railway workers, the Bramhope memorial in Otley is a scaled-down version of the northern portal (replicated at both ends of the structure for symmetry) and has recently undergone a fabulous restoration with funding provided by organisations such as the Railway Heritage Trust.

While the Bramhope Tunnel portals are inaccessible to the public, the miniature versions at Otley are well worth a detour - providing a sobering reminder as to the great human cost by which many of us can travel around by rail in 2020.

Box

The urban myth of the sun shining through Box Tunnel on Brunel’s birthday may have been knocked on the head, but in its portal facing designs he created structures which have stood the test of time well.

While the tunnel itself was a testing construction project - it was the longest tunnel built at the time and consumed more time

(five years) and more lives than could ever have been predicted - the end result was truly spectacular.

Where Stephenson & Budden’s Primrose Hill portals might be considered an application of ancient Classical art, to give spectacular monumental credibility from antiquity to a new method of travel, at Box Brunel drew on history for a more localised context.

LTC Rolt noted that Box was “a triumphal gateway to the Roman City… it was for this reason that he [Brunel] crowned Box with that huge Classical portico”.

But that descent from Chippenham to Bath is actually encountered first through a much plainer portal. It’s the western end that is the grand one - facing Bath and in full public view of the London to Bath road.

At the eastern end, a still-imposing but less exciting brick face was used - perhaps because it is concealed and therefore of less importance to Brunel’s showman-like mind, or perhaps because it helps the passengers’ mental journey from London, to the rural, and then out on to the grandness of Bath.

The height of the opening is far in excess of that which was required (and indeed reduces once inside), but it gives the feel of a generous, celebratory monument to a new form of travel - likely a magnificent sight at the time when each early iron horse steamed downhill at speed out through that splendid mouth. That height has been further accentuated in recent years, with the lowering of the trackbed to allow for electric catenary to be installed.

Architecturally, the eastern portal is of little special merit. But in later years it was added to with an extra, basic cut-out - that which led to the top-secret ‘Tunnel Quarry’ and the War Office’s workings.

Red Hill

The Red Hill Tunnels on the former Midland Counties Railway are a pair. Much like many elsewhere, a double track was widened to four tracks and the tunnels were added to as well.

It is the Northern portals that are most interesting. The earlier structure was given the romantic, grotto-like feature of a tower with windows. When expanded (circa 1893), the engineers chose to replicate that design, seemingly extending the castle further.

Combined with the adjacent Trent river bridge, it retains its high Victorian Gothic aesthetic. Crashing into the cutting and the surrounding woodland landscape, it feels rather like a private parkland with assembled delightful follies to enjoy.

Clayton

Clayton, on the London to Brighton line, is probably known best to many for the 1861 accident that happened in the tunnel - the

safety measures recommended in the enquiry formed the basis of many practices adopted across British railways thereafter.

The details of that are well told in L T C Rolt’s Red for Danger (1966). But it’s to the design of the north portal that I want to draw attention, because it is inhabited fully by tenants… as a home.

J U Rastrick was the likely designer of this romantic, medieval castle-like surround (circa 1841). The octagonal turrets stand tall in the cutting, but between them and above the parapet exists a tiny inbuilt dwelling.

Biddle suggests that it was built for a tunnel gaslighter or signalman - either way it still makes a very pleasant house (with a kitchen in one turret and today a study in the other). It is Grade 2-listed by Historic England and has spectacular views of trains rushing towards it.

Kilsby

Kilsby Tunnel truly was one of Stephenson’s greatest achievements in taming the land ahead of him and his team.

Like Brunel’s Box Tunnel, it took far longer to build than expected and took the lives of many. But, as Biddle has noted, not only were there riots among navvies, collapsing linings and floodings, this was an early triumph against adversity that needed to be shown to be successful - and “at 28ft was made unusually

high to reassure timid passengers fearful of suffocating on the new railway”.

The Kilsby tunnel portals are described as being of typical “Stephenson type” by Pragnell (“these entrances have a quiet dignity, perhaps hiding the triumphal achievement that this construction was”), and like Primrose Hill influenced much that came after.

Solid, inwardly tapering towers are flanked by heavy wing walls, perhaps to further remind travellers of the safety and permanence of the structure. Other similar examples exist along the London to Birmingham Railway route, including one of the pair at Linslade.

Historic England has also Grade 2-listed a small model of one of the Kilsby portals in that village - it sits in the garden of what is thought to have been the home of Stephenson during the tunnel’s construction.

Shugborough

Shugborough is an important inclusion in this listing because it forms part of a wider vision, not limited to just a tunnel - an intention to impress.

Here, along the Trent Valley Line, the engineer John Livock established several notable stations. And one in particular was designed to curry the favour of local landowner the Earl of Lichfield.

Pragnell puts it simply: “[The designer] seems to have had an instinctive sense for locality and atmosphere. The railway cut through a low hill studded with monuments, some classical, which made an impact on the landscape, and here was an opportunity for the railway to contribute to the setting, to enhance rather than destroy, which had been the Earl of Lichfield’s fear.”

Not only were the station and the tunnel mouths established to “enhance” the landscape, so too was one of the most extraordinarily and ornately decorated railway bridges in Britain - the Lichfield Drive Bridge at Shugborough Park.

Both it and the tunnel portals feature carvings related to the famous local family, and as such together can be seen even in 2020 as a grouping of structures intended to pacify those who saw them as a threat.

Moelwyn

Last, but very much not least, are the portals of the Ffestiniog Railway’s Moelwyn Tunnel.

The tunnel’s story itself is well told - it was part of the preservationists’ deviation required to get around a reservoir that had flooded the

earlier route. But the reason for its inclusion here is that it is probably the most recently constructed, properly architected tunnel portal in Britain.

It was always the intention of the Ffestiniog to build proper portals around the dynamiteblown rock faces and early concrete lining. While there are none such on the rough rock tunnels of the Aberglaslyn Pass, up on the connecting Welsh Highland route, it was felt that here the job “needed finishing”.

Designs inspired by the old (now-flooded) Moelwyn Tunnel were drawn up, and precarved stone was imported from Portugal and assembled on site. Tackled consecutively, both portals were completed by 2020.

It’s also worth noting that while the train services today are run by a private company with volunteers, the Moelwyn Tunnel also provides an important function for Network Rail.

That’s because, right along the narrowgauge line, there is a direct communications link for the full-size infrastructure organisation - fascinatingly, this is the most direct and secure route between the Cambrian Coast Line at Minffordd and the Conwy Valley Line at Blaenau Ffestiniog.

So, these latest of tunnel portals on one of Britain’s oldest industrial railways still perform an important national communications function.

But what about…?

Well, that’s my Top Ten. But just outside that ranking sit many others - brilliant and fascinating perhaps not just for their portals, but also notable as engineering feats. So, an honourable mention for the following:

Conwy Tubular Bridge: Much like that over the Menai Straits, this is a tunnel in the sky. And at each end are massive portals within castellated towers, aping the style

of the adjacent castle. Today, we tend not to build new structures that mimic historical neighbours, but more than 150 years later it still seems to work.

Severn Tunnel: Britain’s longest railway tunnel, its simple facades mask an epic project with underground leaks that still test engineers today.

Channel Tunnel: Flat, slap-bang simplicity in the portals at Folkestone - perhaps more for ease of security than an overtly modern style.

Thames Tunnel: Not so much architecturally interesting portals, but for the interiors. Separating the twin bores of the Brunels’ former foot tunnels (later converted to rail use) run a clear line of archways.

Before a recent strengthening they displayed more detail, but in the earliest years these gentle curved arches also formed spaces for stallholders. So much has changed within what might seem to most to be a very boring space.

ALAMY/TIM DUNN. Primrose Hill Tunnel was London’s first ever railway tunnel, following the opening of the London and Birmingham Railway in 1838. Designed by W H Budden, the eastern portal (left) was designed to be imposing, to reassure nervous passengers that it was safe. A second bore and twin portals were added in 1879, with the western portal pictured on the right from a Chiltern Railways train passing over the West Coast Main Line.

PAUL BIGLAND/ALAMY. Arriva Trains Wales 158827 emerges from Bangor Tunnel on February 17 2010. The unusual Egyptian architectural style of its portals was utilised elsewhere on the route by the Chester and Crewe Railway Company, including on the iconic Britannia Bridge (inset).

ALAMY. Located in Derbyshire, on the Midland Main Line between Belper and Duffield, Milford Tunnel’s north portal is described as a ‘rich Saxon arch’.

ALAMY. A monument in the shape of Bramhope Tunnel’s north portal was erected in Otley churchyard to commemorate the lives of the 24 men who were killed during the 2.14-mile-long tunnel’s construction between 1845-49.

NETWORK RAIL. Rumoured to have been aligned so that the sun would shine through on Brunel’s birthday (April 9), Box Tunnel (1.83 miles) was the longest railway tunnel in the world when it opened in 1841. The dramatic western portal was designed to reflect the classical architecture of nearby Bath and is Grade 2*-listed by Historic England.

PAUL BIGLAND. Located on the Brighton Main Line between Hassocks and Preston Park station, Clayton Tunnel is the infamous location of a three-train collision in August 1861 that claimed the lives of 23 people and injured a further 176. The turreted and castellated northern portal (pictured here) contains perhaps the most unusual dwelling in Sussex.

PAUL ROBERTSON. East Midlands Railway 43067 forms the rear of the 1845 Nottingham-Leicester on July 26, as it disappears into Red Hill Tunnel on the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border. Originally a single bore, a twin tunnel was added following the widening of the Midland Main Line in 1891-93. It is sandwiched between twin viaducts over the River Trent to the north and East Midlands Parkway station and Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station to its immediate south.

ALAMY. A southbound Virgin Trains Class 390 Pendolino exits Kilsby Tunnel (near Rugby) in August 2010. With an estimated 400 trains using the tunnel per day before the outbreak of COVID-19, Network Rail seized the opportunity in May to close the line for a fortnight and carry out essential repair works.

TRUST. ANDY SAVAGE/RAILWAY HERITAGE Moelwyn Tunnel on the Ffestiniog Railway is the only narrow-gauge tunnel to make Tim Dunn’s top ten list. It is also by far the newest, having opened in June 1977. The stone portals were a much later addition, with construction of the south portal (pictured here) commencing last winter.

NETWORK RAIL. The brick-lined 710-metre-long Shugborough Tunnel was completed in 1847 for the London North Western Railway, after landowner Thomas William Anson (the 1st Earl of Lichfield) of Shugborough Hall insisted that the railway be put into a tunnel or diverted away from his land. Its portals are of ashlar masonry topped by heavy-set parapets.

COLOUR RAIL. A Class 120 emerges on the English side of Severn Tunnel on July 1 1961. Britain’s longest domestic railway tunnel (4 miles 624 yards) did not make Tim Dunn’s top ten list but remains a remarkable feat of Victorian engineering.