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Crumlin Viaduct

Crumlin Viaduct


Gordon Wood with Neil Parkhouse and Steve Rowson

324 pages. 275x275mm. Printed full colour throughout on gloss art paper, laminated printed board covers.

ISBN13 9781915069399

£60.00

This is the story of a brilliant but flawed engineer, who built a brilliant but flawed bridge. Thomas W. Kennard is both the hero and villain of this book, a man who, in 1852 – just over two decades after the Rainhill Trials – accepted a verbal contract from the Newport, Abergavenny & Hereford Railway Company to build an enormous viaduct 1,500 feet long and rising up to 200 feet above the Ebbw Valley. Constructed almost entirely of iron and completed in 1857, the finished viaduct was a thing of grace and beauty, and the pride of the Ebbw and Kendon valleys which it spanned. Kennard, however, had proved obstructive and uncommunicative during the construction, constantly running short of money and pressurising the company for extra payments. Deliveries were late, record and stock keeping was poor and the lack of a written contract – one was only drawn up after the viaduct had been built – all led to the inevitable ‘day in court’. Within twenty years of its completion, repairs were becoming necessary and from the early years of the 20th century, the Great Western Railway began considering its total reconstruction or even a deviation of the line which it carried. British Railways realised in the late 1950s that the viaduct had a very limited life span without serious remedial work or rebuilding, whilst the structure had been listed in 1961 which served to further complicate matters. In the end, the 1963 Beeching Report did for the Vale of Neath line, which closed in June 1964 and sealed Crumlin Viaduct’s fate. Demolition of the structure was completed in spring 1966 but not before a last brief burst of fame when it starred in the Hollywood movie Arabesque, alongside Gregory Peck and the beautiful Italian actress Sophia Loren. Within these pages, the authors tell the story of the viaduct from start to finish, with comprehensive details of its design and construction, and of the later repairs, of Kennard’s case in the Court of Arbitration, of the traffic that passed over it and finally how this huge structure was demolished. They also look at other related aspects, such as the early tramroads which passed beneath it, the Llanhilleth Branch from Crumlin Junction, and at Crumlin Navigation Colliery. The viaduct was also to be one of the very first railway subjects to be photographed, from the start of building, by the London Stereoscopic Company, of which Kennard’s brother Henry was a director. Lavishly illustrated, with a plethora of photographs from construction in the 1850s to demolition in the mid-1960s, along with maps and a huge range of drawings and plans, this book will therefore stand as a fitting memorial to one of the most iconic bridges ever built and one still much missed in the Welsh valleys it graced for 110 years.

Crumlin Viaduct - Sample Images

sample book illustration
Plate 4.2: The first column of the first pier – No. 4, the ‘Isabella Pier’ – was raised in December 1853. In August 1854, the site was visited by an amateur photographer and member of the Photographic Society, W.H. Nicholl. His portrait from alongside the Ebbw River of the by then almost complete ‘Isabella Pier’ was published in the Photographic Album for the Year 1855. The picture is looking upstream, with the river bridge in the foreground carrying Mark Philips’ tramroad to its coal wharf on the canal (off right). The tramroad’s route from Trinant Colliery ran along the top of the escarpment behind, on its way to the incline down to the wharf, off picture to the left. In the background is the bridge carrying the Western Valleys line, which marked the 1829 continuation from canal head of the MR&CC’s tramroad across the river and further down the valley towards Newport. The foundations of this pier blocked off the old canal basin and so truncated the canal by a short length. Only a year before this photograph, the main line tramroads had been converted to a proper standard gauge (4ft 81/2ins) edge railway. On top of the pier is the crane used for bringing up components for its construction and ready to be used for raising the transverse girders. Stephen Rowson collection
sample book illustration
Plate 13.44: This view was taken on 12th December 1965, with the photographer having walked out onto the spans from High Level station during the demolition. Road improvements, including a new bridge over the line, have contributed to the change in this scene today. The B4251 Kendon Road was realigned to run from the new bridge and behind the Railway Hotel. Main Street was also then realigned and now runs behind the large red brick buildings, albeit only the one to the right of the Railway Hotel still survives. Over three years after closure, Celynen North Halt still remained in place, including its footbridge – which incidentally had come second-hand from Usk station – used by miners to reach the colliery. A.N.H. Glover/Kidderminster Railway Museum