Railway overbridge MVL3/103, Colliery Lane (Wheatleys)

Railway overbridge built 1845-1849, designed by A S Jee for the Huddersfield and Manchester Railway, and extended with a second span in 1881-1884.

MATERIALS: squared coursed quarry-faced gritstone and tooled gritstone.

DESCRIPTION: a double-span, segmental arched bridge built over a cutting with the ends obscured by the adjacent embankments. The faces of the arches have tooled keyed voussoirs with projecting key stones, with tooled edges resting on slightly projecting ashlar impost bands. The voussoirs project out slightly from the surfaces of the soffits of the arches. The abutments and the spandrels are built of coursed quarry-faced gritstone. The quoins of the abutments are of quarry-faced stone with tooled edges. The central pier and the ends of the bridge are supported by canted buttresses. The stone courses in the spandrels are even in height and rise to an ashlar string course. The string course to either side of the bridge acts as a base for a parapet wall. Each parapet has ashlar coping stones and terminates in a rectangular stone pier that breaks forward from the face of the bridge. The north-western ends of the parapet walls splay out slightly, while the southern abutment has curved and canted wing walls to either side. The parapets are protected by a triple tubular steel fence with cast-iron fence posts marked - SYDNEY RAINES WAKEFIELD, supported by bolted struts that are recessed into the sides of the coping stones. The bridge deck forms part of the Sustrans National Cycle Route 66 and has been raised and given a tarmacadam surface, with the sides protected by modern steel mesh fencing, supported by steel posts.

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 04/12/2018