Twerton Viaduct, The Old Station House And Nos 1 To 13 The Arches

Twerton Viaduct, the Old Station House and Nos 1 to 13 The Arches

A railway viaduct incorporating a station building, arches and workers houses, completed in 1840 for the Great Western Railway to a design by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

The viaduct is built in lias stone with dressings in stone ashlar and engineering brick. Along its south side, facing Twerton, it is mostly supported by a steep earth bank. The Tudor style station building is also built in lias stone with ashlar dressings. Its irregular roof is covered in slate and has three stone ashlar chimney stacks: one at its north-west corner, one to the east and one at its south-west corner, now truncated.

The raised viaduct runs for approximately 605 metres along the Lower Bristol Road. It incorporates a station building at its east end with external steps leading to the ticket office and platform, various arches for storage and workshops, four tunnels with decorative arches linking the Lower Bristol Road with Twerton, and a row of workers dwellings at its west end.

The station has a two-room plan with a narrow central hall on the ground floor, with stairs in the rear south-east corner leading to the upper floors. The space in the viaduct immediately behind the station building is incorporated within it, forming part of its ground floor layout, with windows and an entrance to the rear along Twerton High Street. Two arches left of the station building along the Lower Bristol Road are now blocked, while those immediately to its right are in use as a café, storage spaces and workshops. The twelve small houses built into the viaduct each had two rooms.

From east to west, the first tunnel leading to Twerton High Street is skewed, with broad four-centred arches flanked by wide buttresses, both dressed in engineering brick, probably replacing former stone ashlar dressings. The station building to its right has a flight of steps to its east side, enclosing a two-storey toilet block, that leads to the former ticket office and the platform. The front elevation of the station, along the Lower Bristol Road, has two gabled bays, with an entrance in the smaller right-hand bay. It has stone mullion windows on the first and second floor and one three-light stone mullion window at ground floor level, left of the entrance. The west elevation, with a small dormer in the roof, has a full height projecting bay with a sloping slate roof and stone mullion windows at both floor levels.

The second tunnel, to the right of the station building, has a four-centred arch flanked by tall buttresses. The third is a drop arch in brick that leads to a narrow pedestrian tunnel, and the fourth tunnel has a four-centred arch flanked by octagonal buttresses (formerly castellated) with parts of its stone dressings replaced in brick. The arch on the other side has plain buttresses. A fifth four-centred arch at the far west end of the viaduct is in engineering brick; this does not appear to have been used as a tunnel entrance, but rather as storage space (no 13 The Arches).

The row of former workers houses (nos 1–12 The Arches) is situated at the viaduct's west end, between the third and fourth arch, and consists of six narrow twin door-openings, with each house having one window opening, now mostly enlarged to use as door openings. All openings have decorative Tudor style hood moulds, and the centre of the row (above no 6) is articulated by a small blank coat of arms set in a raised section of the viaduct's parapet.

Inside the former station, stairs with stick balusters and swept rails partly survive, including timber floors (now partly covered in cement), two fireplaces with plain surround (the one on the ground floor with original grate), some door and window surrounds, and a small ticket hatch on the first floor. Inside the former workers houses, one of the fireplaces partly survives, and of the remainder the stone flues are still visible.

The viaduct at Twerton forms part of the Bristol to Bath section of the Great Western Railway laid out between Paddington and Penzance. It was opened in August 1840, constructed to a design by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859). As to the design of the arches built into the viaduct, Brunel was probably influenced by those that formed part of the London and Greenwich Railway built in 1836. The workers dwellings that Brunel designed into the viaduct replaced a row of former textile mill worker's cottages belonging to Charles Wilkins's Mill, which were demolished due to the building of the viaduct.

The viaduct was constructed on a site originally purchased for the Kennet and Avon Canal extension to Bristol, but as by 1812 a towpath had been built along the River Avon, a canal extension was no longer needed. Instead, the land was sold to the Great Western Railway Company, who built the present viaduct, which bisects the former rural village of Twerton, separating it from the River Avon.

Twerton Station was closed as a station in 1917, initially as a temporary wartime economy measure, but later because passenger numbers had dropped due to the introduction of electric trams between Twerton and Bath. In 1923 the footbridge at Twerton Station was removed and reinstated at Shrivenham.