Lambley Viaduct
| Lambley Viaduct | |
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Lambley Viaduct
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| Coordinates | 54°55′11″N 2°30′34″W / 54.91968°N 2.50935°WCoordinates: 54°55′11″N 2°30′34″W / 54.91968°N 2.50935°W |
| Carries | Redundant railway |
| Crosses | River Tyne |
| Locale | Northumberland |
| Characteristics | |
| Material | Stone |
| Total length | 260 metres |
| History | |
| Construction end | 1852 |
| Statistics | |
| Daily traffic | No |
| Toll | No |
 Lambley Viaduct
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The Lambley Viaduct is a stone bridge across the River South Tyne at Lambley in Northumberland. Formerly a railway bridge, it remains open to pedestrians but one end of the viaduct has been fenced off.
Lambley viaduct crosses the River South Tyne as a series of elegant stone arches. More than 260m long, it once carried the Haltwhistle to Alston railway. The railway, which was opened in 1852 to haul coal and lead from the Alston mines, closed in 1976, and the viaduct allowed to decay. In 1991 the British Rail Property Board agreed to repair the viaduct and hand it over to the North Pennine Heritage Trust who would maintain it in the future; however the Trust went into administration in 2011.
The viaduct may have been designed by George Barclay Bruce, an eminent Victorian engineer who was involved in the Alston line before leaving for India to pioneer railway construction there. It is a particularly elegant example of Victorian engineering: the river is crossed by nine 17-metre (56 ft) wide arches which support a deck 32 metres (105 ft) above the river but, as it carried a single rail track, only 3.5 metres (11 ft) wide. The piers to the arches are built of massive rough-faced stones each weighing up to 500 kilograms (1,100 lb), with similar-sized stones in ashlar to the main arch voussoirs. The spandrels and piers to the 6-metre (20 ft) wide approach arches are built of coursed rubble masonry. One end of the viaduct has been fenced off to stop people straying into Lambley railway station which is now a private house.
It is a Grade II* listed structure.
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