Newton Cap Railway Viaduct over River Wear

Railway Viaduct, 1854-1857 for the North Eastern Railway (NER) Bishop Auckland Branch line.

MATERIALS: rock-faced sandstone with ashlar dressings and brick-lined soffits.

PLAN: rectangular, oriented roughly north to south.

DESCRIPTION: the viaduct is about 828ft (252.374m) long, and comprises 11 semi-circular arches, each of 60ft (18.288m) span, supported on tall masonry piers and abutments which taper upwards to an ashlar impost band. Counting from the south, the seventh and eighth arches span the River Wear (about 100ft below), while the ninth spans a local access road. The basal courses of piers five to eight stand on the floodplain, and are extended forward and back to form boat-shaped cutwaters that rise to domed, ashlar tops; all other piers rise straight from the valley sides. The arches have single arch rings formed of large stone voussoirs; the soffit of each arch is executed in red brick. All stonework is rock-faced apart from the undersides of the arch rings where it is smooth to match the brickwork, and the impost bands on the piers and a second band at the level of the cutwater caps on the floodplain piers, which are also ashlar. Original parapets were removed or obscured by the insertion of the current road deck, but the ashlar string course with roll moulding from which they rose, is visible. The modern road deck is a concrete slab cantilevered out over the viaduct elevations to allow for the inclusion of footpaths either side of the carriageway; the present parapets are crash-proof metal fences affixed to the edges of the road deck.

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 22 November 2024 to update the Links in the Sources