Victorian work on viaducts is a bit of a marvel
NOT everything the Victorians did for us worked out well. More than a few churches in Gloucestershire villages were perfectly fine in their original form.
Then 19th-century architects came along, added a frippery here, changed the shape of a window there, put castellations around the roof and spoiled the simple delight that was there before. Not to mention creating damp problems.
But the Victorians did build good railways and eye-pleasing viaducts to carry them over the county’s dells and valleys. For proof, when you are stuck in a traffic jam (as inevitably you will be) travelling from the direction of Rodborough towards Merrywalks in Stroud, enjoy the symmetry of the viaduct as you crawl, snail’s pace, beneath.
Stanway’s elegant viaduct has a story to tell. It carries the Gloucester and Warwick Railway’s (GWR) steam and vintage diesel hauled trains aloft and is said to be the largest on a UK heritage rail route.
If you’ve travelled on a GWR service from Hunting Butts in Cheltenham to Broadway – and you should by the way, it’s splendid – then you’ll know that crossing Stanway viaduct is one of the highlights of the trip.
Edwardian rather than Victorian, Stanway’s beaut of a bridge soars almost 50 feet above the valley floor on 15 brick-built arches. But during its construction, ominously on November 13, 1903, a large section of it collapsed.
The supporting timbers of arch number 10 had been removed a few days before, perhaps too early, and wet weather combined with the weight of a steam crane atop caused it to collapse.
Two adjoining arches came crashing down too and four workmen were killed.
Another had a remarkable escape. A navvy named Smith was standing on top of arch number 10 when he felt it give way and grabbed an iron water pipe running along the parapet.
Under the weight of Mr Smith and the force of gravity, the pipe bent earthwards before snapping, dropping the hapless labourer 30 feet to the ground. Mr Smith survived the fall and was put under the adjacent arch by workmates to recover.
Unfortunately, that arch collapsed on him, but again he survived. Had he been a cat he’d have had only seven lives left.
At 6am on April 30 in 1967 a local landmark disappeared when Dowdeswell viaduct was reduced to rubble. For 89 years the elegant 12 spans tiptoed across the valley near the reservoir on the A40 outside Cheltenham. But when the railway line to Kingham closed in 1962 the beautiful bridge was rendered redundant.
Just a couple of years before the viaduct was razed, when the tracks had already been removed, I walked across it with other rucksack carriers on a Duke of Edinburgh expedition on our way to camp at Whalley Farm on the reservoir side of the A40. The views were wonderful.
It took 11 hundredweight of gelignite to fell the 13,000-ton structure. Hundreds of local people watched and when the dust cleared there was fresh air where previously had been a shining example of Victorian engineering.
When building St Catherine’s viaduct to carry the Great Western Railway’s line out of Gloucester, city brick-makers returned to source clay from much the same spot as Roman slaves had done almost two millennia before.
Digging out this clay resulted, by the 1880s, in a man-made lake known as Tabby Pitt’s pool, which stood adjacent to Archdeacon Meadow on ground now occupied by Gouda Way. This was filled in following the unfortunate death of Mr Tabby Pitt, who fell into it and drowned.
The Forest lost a spectacular landmark in 1965 when Lower Lydbrook viaduct was demolished.
Having high-stepped over the convergence of the Wye and Lydbrook valleys on its elegant stone piers for almost a century, the 187-yards-long and 90-feet-high railway bridge was a bold announcement of Victorian engineering prowess.
The viaduct punctuated a branch of the Severn and Wye Railway, which connected Serridge Junction, via Parkend and Cinderford, with Lydbrook Junction on the Ross and Monmouth Railway.
Incidentally, according to a local story, in the late 1930s a footballer named Colin Hamblin, who played for Broadwell AFC, kicked a ball clean over Lower Lydbrook Viaduct.
Let’s hope the story is true. An architectural structure so magnificent deserves a legend to colour its memory.