Railway Bridge With Wall To West And Coal Drops To East

The railway bridge with an attached wall and coal drops, located on the north side of Sowerby Bridge Station Road, dates from around 1875 and was built for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. Constructed from rock-faced stone, with timber and iron used for the coal drops, the bridge carries the railway over the road and features a long retaining wall on the left and a 15-bay coal drop to the right.

The bridge itself has a rusticated round arch, with the voussoirs aligned to the courses, and is flanked by flat piers, the left one being narrower. An ashlar band runs below the parapet, which is topped with flat ashlar coping. The retaining wall slopes down to ground level on the left and features an ashlar band below the parapet, which is made of rock-faced stone on the right and thinly-coursed stone otherwise, with rubble coping.

The coal drops are divided by stone piers, with taller, quoined, tapered end piers that have ashlar bands and chamfered capstones. Each bay's upper third has a board retaining wall, while the middle third contains paired coal chutes with iron spouts (some of which have been removed), shutters, and winding gear. The coal drops are located beneath the railway track, designed for coal to be dropped into them from trucks on the line above. They are an impressive and extremely well-preserved example of their type.

The Manchester to Leeds railway line was constructed around 1840, engineered by George Stephenson. While the bridge may date from that time, it is more likely associated with the addition of extra sidings and track in the 1860s and 1870s. The viaduct over Town Hall Street/West Street was widened in 1862, and the station moved to its current site near the coal drops in 1876.