Lambley Viaduct is a stone bridge across the

River South Tyne The River Tyne is a river in North East England. Its length (excluding tributaries) is . It is formed by the North Tyne and the South Tyne, which converge at Warden Rock near Hexham in Northumberland at a place dubbed 'The Meeting of the Wat ...

at Lambley in Northumberland. Formerly a railway bridge, it remains open to pedestrians but one end of the viaduct has been fenced off.

History

Lambley viaduct crosses the

as a series of elegant stone

arch An arch is a vertical curved structure that spans an elevated space and may or may not support the weight above it, or in case of a horizontal arch like an arch dam, the hydrostatic pressure against it. Arches may be synonymous with vaul ...

es. More than long, it once carried the Haltwhistle to Alston railway. The railway, which was opened in 1852 to haul coal and lead from the Alston mines, closed in 1976, and the viaduct was allowed to decay. In 1991 the British Rail Property Board agreed to repair the viaduct and hand it over to the North Pennine Heritage Trust which would maintain it in the future; however the Trust went into administration in 2011. The viaduct was probably designed by

George Barclay Bruce Sir George Barclay Bruce (1 October 1821 – 25 August 1908) was a British civil engineer. He was primarily a railway engineer who worked for many railway companies in Britain, Europe, Asia and South America. He was closely involved with ...

, a Victorian engineer who was involved in the Alston line before leaving for India to pioneer railway construction there. It is a particularly elegant example of Victorian engineering: the river is crossed by nine wide arches which support a deck at least above the river but, as it carried a single rail track, only wide. The

piers Piers may refer to: * Pier, a raised structure over a body of water * Pier (architecture), an architectural support * Piers (name), a given name and surname (including lists of people with the name) * Piers baronets, two titles, in the baronetages ...

to the arches are built of massive rough-faced stones each weighing up to , with similar-sized stones in

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

to the main arch voussoirs. The spandrels and piers to the wide approach arches are built of coursed rubble masonry. One end of the viaduct has been fenced off, after the path was diverted in 2004 to pass further away from Lambley railway station, which is now a private house. It is a

Grade II* listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

structure.

References

{{Commons category Bridges in Northumberland Crossings of the River Tyne Former railway bridges in the United Kingdom Grade II* listed railway bridges and viaducts