World’s oldest railway bridge and Dartmoor tramshed get listed status from Historic England
SKERNE Bridge, which was built for the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway in 1825, has now been granted Grade I-listed status by Historic England.
One of only seven Grade I-listed railway bridges in England, it was built in just eight months and is the work of architect Ignatius Bonomi, a skilled designer of masonry bridges, who had been the county surveyor for bridges for County Durham since 1813.
He was commissioned to begin work in 1824 and created an elegantly proportioned structure with a single masonry arch spanning the river, flanked by two smaller pedestrian arches set in the wide piers rising from the riverbank.
The listing was made four years before major celebrations to make the 200th anniversary of the Stockton & Darlington are expected to draw visitors from abroad to the North East.
Elsewhere, Bridlington South signalbox has been given Grade II-listed status.
In October, the 65-lever frame at the ’box was upgraded by Network Rail to a modern control panel. Yet while the historic levers were taken out of action, they were able to remain in place inside the ’box.
Also now listed as Grade II is Tyrwhitt’s Wharf, at Roborough Down, a rare survivor of the horsedrawn Plymouth & Dartmoor Railway.
The tramway’s first line opened in 1823, was completed in 1827, and ran from Princetown on to Sutton Harbour in Plymouth – a distance of 25 ½ miles. It carried granite stone from Dartmoor to Plymouth for its use in construction projects and brought raw materials and general supplies back to Princetown, and was part of local MP Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt’s plan to improve the economy of the moorland. He also created Dartmoor Prison to house French prisoners captured during the Napoleonic Wars.
The wharf near Buckland Monachorum, said to be a nationallyimportant early example of a horse tramway building, was erected in 1823 as a staging point for the stabling and refreshment of the horses.
The route of the tramway can still be traced in parts of the moorland landscape, and some of it is now used as a trackway.
In 1883, part of the tramway was rebuilt as the GWR’s standard gauge Princetown branch. Most of the rest of the tramway was disused by 1900, although one of its branches, the Lee Moor Tramway, which famously crossed the GWR main line near Laira, saw some traffic as late as 1960.