St James' Viaduct (MLN110705)

St James' Viaduct is a major urban railway viaduct constructed in limestone ashlar and English bond blue engineering brickwork, with substantial steel components. It comprises a central section housing pedestrian passages, flanked by wide skewed roadway openings, with six segmental arches extending to the east and eleven to the west, all supporting railway tracks above. The outer arches at both ends have been largely refaced in engineering brick, while the formal central section retains its original stone.

The central section is designed in the Tudor Gothic idiom and forms the principal architectural feature. The north front, facing the city, displays a pair of octagonal turrets flanking a doorway beneath paired transom lights with a stone mullion and drip mould. Above this sits a small rose window with a raised architrave, possibly depicting a locomotive wheel. The turrets feature two stepped, weathered offsets, slit embrasures, and crenellated cappings. Between them, the parapet carries stepped merlons without crenels, arranged to form a pediment containing two raised shields. On either side of the turrets is a door opening with a four-centred head in a moulded surround. The west doorway leads to a pedestrian walkway, open to a former roadway through three low, four-centred arches with deep splays set in thick brickwork. The east doorway accesses an enclosed pedestrian throughway. Above these elements runs a crenellated parapet over a plain frieze with moulding above and below. This parapet extends across wide, skewed roadway arches formed by large riveted steel girders dating from 1911–12, each flanked by small square buttresses with two offsets and a further four-centred arch with an additional buttress. The eastern archway opens into a pedestrian throughway with low arches into the skew bay, while the western doorway is fitted with an iron gate.

The south front is of simpler design and has been altered. The central section presents broad, plain ashlar work with a crenellated parapet above a wide, sealed, segmental arch positioned centrally. This arch has two slit embrasures and a sealed rectangular opening at ground level. To its left is a round-arched opening, and to the right a four-centred arched doorway. A four-centred arch on the left leads to a pedestrian throughway flanked by stepped stone buttresses. At the right end stands a plain pier with a sealed, round-arched door opening to the left. Beyond the central section on both sides are steel girders spanning the roadways.

The viaduct sections extending from the central block maintain segmental brick arches beneath plain stone parapets. The eastern section has six arches and terminates with a tall octagonal pier that abuts the separately listed Grade II Skew Bridge. The western section comprises eleven segmental arches with a stone parapet. The first arch has been adapted in stone as a four-centred opening. The viaduct continues westward to a steel span constructed over Wells Road in 1961–62. The steel span, its eastern pier abutment, and the arches west of it are excluded from this listing.