British Rail Midland Region London Rugby Line Bridge Number 115 (Folly Bridge) is a Grade II listed building in the Dacorum local planning authority area, England. First listed on 29 May 1986. Bridge.
British Rail Midland Region London Rugby Line Bridge Number 115 (Folly Bridge)
- WRENN ID
- gentle-string-frost
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Dacorum
- Constituency
- Harpenden and Berkhamsted MP: Victoria Collins (LD)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 29 May 1986
- Type
- Bridge
- Address
- British Rail Midland Region London Rugby Line Bridge Number 115 (Folly Bridge), Tring
- OS grid reference
- SP 937 139
- Coordinates
- 51.81651, -0.64069
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Folly Bridge, also known as Bridge Number 115, is a road bridge over the railway at Tring Cutting, located partly in Marsworth Parish, Buckinghamshire. It was built around 1837 by Robert Stephenson for the London and Birmingham Railway Company. The bridge is constructed of brown brick and features stone impost bands, skewbacks, a cornice, and parapet copings. The northern parapet has been rebuilt for safety reasons using red brick with triangular section concrete copings.
This long, narrow bridge has three arches, with traffic controlled by lights on the B488 road, which crosses the deep Tring Cutting, approximately 50 feet deep and 2½ miles long. The central arch is a higher 7-ring segmental arch that spans the trackbed, supported by slender rectangular piers at the foot of the earth slopes on either side. Each pier has a tall opening with a round arched head and bottom. The side arches are slightly lower segmental 7-ring arches that are set into the earth slopes at the abutments.
At roadway level, there is a wide unmoulded stone cornice, a brick parapet, and rectangular terminal piers with weathered stone copings remaining on the south side. The cutting was created due to Stephenson's decision to maintain a maximum gradient of 1/330 on the line, and there is a well-known lithograph by J.C. Bourne depicting the excavation work by navvies. The railway line was officially opened on April 9, 1838, and the county boundary with Buckinghamshire runs along the centerline of the road over the bridge.
Local climate
British Rail Midland Region London Rugby Line Bridge Number 115 (Folly Bridge) sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 730 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 77% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 79% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 38 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 72% of listed buildings. Of these, 18 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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