Flockton Wagonway Viaduct

Summary

A twenty-arched viaduct with associated embanked approaches, probably built in the 1790s. The viaduct spanned a damp depression on the hillside to allow a straighter route for the Flockton Wagonway, an early horse-drawn, timber-railed, private railway opened in the 1770s to link coal workings to the Calder and Hebble Navigation at Horbury Bridge.

Reasons for Designation

Flockton Wagonway Viaduct is listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a rare and relatively well-preserved surviving example of a substantial stone structure built for an C18 horse-drawn wagonway.

Historic interest:

* wagonways, such as the Flockton Wagonway, were pioneering early railways, and the viaduct at Flockton is the oldest known railway viaduct.

Group value:

* with the wagonway tunnel just over 0.5km to the north-east.

History

The viaduct was constructed as part of an extension to the Flockton Wagonway, a privately-operated narrow-gauge colliery railway initially constructed with timber rails in the early 1770s, which operated until closure in 1893.

Coal is thought to have been mined in the area around the village of Flockton from at least the late Middle Ages, two seams of outcropping coal being named for the village: Flockton Thin (a good quality house coal) and Flockton Thick (which in the C19 was used for producing coal gas, oil and coke). The high cost of transporting coal by road to markets limited production until about 1770 when the Calder and Hebble Navigation was opened to the coal trade. This prompted a local timber merchant and maltster, Richard Milnes (1712-1779) to acquire a lease to extract coal from around New Hall and Dial Wood, to the east of Flockton. Around 1772, in partnership with his four sons, he spent some £6000 in building a wagonway around two miles long from Dial Wood, passing downhill to the north of Middlestown, to the canal at Horbury Bridge.

This timber-railed early railway was worked by gravity and horses, and was noted in contemporary documents as a ‘Newcastle Road’; being similar to C18 wagonways built around Tyneside. It was clearly in operation by 1775, by which time the Milnes family was selling coal to the Aire and Calder Navigation Company at 7s 10d per dozen (a dozen of coal being a customary measure by volume which probably equated to around 2 tonnes). Further leases and agreements saw the expansion of mining operations, prompting alterations to the wagonway. This included a southwards extension to the line eventually being completed to what became Lane End Colliery, a pithead established before 1803, which subsequently provided access to deeper seams. This extension, of about a mile, entailed the construction of a tunnel nearly 100m long and a twenty-arch viaduct, both designed to provide a relatively direct route on a gentle gradient for the loaded wagons to descend towards the canal. Although documentary evidence does not refer directly to either the tunnel or viaduct, it does strongly suggest that the tunnel was constructed by about 1792, with the viaduct probably slightly later.

The viaduct, an architecturally utilitarian structure, carried the line over a damp depression on the hillside, the source of the Coxley Beck. Probably prompted by a 1799 lease to extract coal at Emroyd, the northern part of the wagonway, downhill from the viaduct and tunnel, was rerouted to include a new self-acting inclined plane which appears to have been complete by the time of the death of James Milnes in 1803; this further streamlining the route of the wagonway to the canal.

Around 1825 the line was re-laid with wrought iron rails set on stone sleeper blocks; the gauge set to 3ft 9ins. Records of an 1857 court case indicate that loaded trains of between six and ten waggons would descend the line every hour between 7am and 5pm. From 1840 there were various schemes to connect the Flockton Wagonway with the national rail network, but none were realised because of the difficulty in gaining consent to cross the canal. Instead contractors were employed to cart coal a mile along the turnpike road from the canal wharf to Horbury and Ossett railway station. Consequently, the wagonway was not developed further, although a steam locomotive was purchased in 1878 from Manning Wardle of Leeds to work the mile-long section of the line between the canal and the foot of the incline. By the end of the 1880s coal production was in decline, from 123,600 tons in 1889 to 78,200 tons in 1892. In 1893 the owner of the colliery died and later the same year production was halted by a national coal miners’ strike. The colliery never reopened. Equipment from the wagonway was offered for sale in 1895.

The second half of the C18 saw a number of early railways constructed in Yorkshire, mostly built to transport coal to nearby canals. Although established after the Middleton Railway Leeds (founded as a wagonway in 1758), the Flockton Wagonway was one of the earliest; pre-dating the Lake Lock Rail Road near Wakefield (opened 1798, considered to be the first public railway). James Milnes (1745-1803), who managed the business after his father’s death in 1779, may have been the engineer for the Flockton Wagonway, and he is known to have provided advice in 1796-1798 for the construction of another early railway; that for Robert Smithson’s New Park Colliery near Wakefield.

Flockton Wagonway (with its tunnel, viaduct and inclined plane) was in many respects at the forefront of early railway technology. Even the adoption of wrought-iron rails in 1825 was early, as earlier iron-railed railways had used cast iron. The Causey Arch in County Durham (built 1727 for a similar wooden wagonway) is generally regarded as the world’s earliest railway bridge. Flockton Wagonway Viaduct is potentially the earliest multi-span railway bridge or viaduct in the world.

Details

Wagonway viaduct, probably 1790s, for the Flockton Wagonway.

DESCRIPTION: the viaduct is of utilitarian design, built of squared stone laid to courses. It is approximately 55m long with twenty round arches, each with a span of about 2m that supports a track bed that is up to, at most, about 3m above the surrounding ground surface. The viaduct measures approximately 3m wide between its low parapets and is thought to have been single tracked.

The route of the wagonway approaches the viaduct via embankments to the north and south; the viaduct forming a very slight curve in plan form, with the line following a gentle gradient that descends to the north. The area covered by the listing includes these approach embankments at either end of the viaduct.

The arches have single arch rings of roughly squared stone. The low parapets are slightly corbelled out from the face of the viaduct, and where they survive, have thin coping stones.

Sources

Books and journals
The Old Flockton Collieries c.1772-1893 in British Mining, Northern Mines Research Society, ,Vol. 19, (1982), 97-122

End of official list entry