Deep Pit railway footbridge WBS/24, including brick piers, northern setted access path and southern access ramp, Hindley, Wigan

Summary

A railway pedestrian overbridge of 1887, probably designed by Augustus Topp for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, and made by Walker Brothers in wrought and cast iron, with engineering-brick piers.

Description

A railway pedestrian overbridge of 1887, probably designed by Augustus Topp for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, and made by Walker Brothers.

MATERIALS: wrought-iron span and ramp supported by engineering-brick piers and cast-iron frame, sandstone setts to the northern access path.

PLAN: an approximately north-south span of around 40m, with an east-west ramp around 35m long at its southern end.

DESCRIPTION: unusually for a railway footbridge, the bridge is of a bowstring-truss type, with a basket-arched upper chord rising to around 4m above a flat deck around 2m wide. The upper chord and deck are connected by vertical ties creating 26 bays or sections, with additional diagonal ties in the outer sections, and crossed diagonal ties in the central four sections. Swan-necked vertical stays drop from the upper chord and return across the soffit of the deck. The upper chords are tied horizontally by lateral and crossed diagonal ties, as far as the outer three sections at either end. Here, as the arch drops towards the deck, the vertical stays extend above the arch to carry the horizontal ties. This flat ‘roof’ extends to the end of the arch, where it meets an arch-headed portal of lattice work. This is crowned with a vertical finial with decorative diagonal supports (that to the south end broken and without its supports, in 2023). The feet of the bridge are bolted to the support piers. Modern mesh is fixed to the trusses.

The southern ramp is also of wrought-iron, with riveted lattice balustrades surmounted by rails with welded supports with splayed feet. Outer diagonal stays are tied beneath the soffit of the deck. The ramp is supported by two frames, each comprising two cast-iron columns with wrought-iron diagonal ties. The columns have palmette capitals.

The south end of the bridge rests on a rectangular blue-brick pier with stone cap. This carries an L-plan brick wall enclosing the landing at the top of the ramp, with a stone coping on the angle and bullnosed brick copings elsewhere. The north end rests on a similar pier, buttressed to east and west by a wall of the same material, sloping down at 45 degrees, which retains the earth ramp of the northern approach.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: the bridge is approached from the north-east by a setted path approximately 25m long, with (in 2023) a small section of missing setts in its northern edge around half-way along.

History

The Deep Pit railway footbridge was built in 1887 to cross the line of the Liverpool and Bury Railway. The line was already laid out by 1846 but was not opened until November 1848, by which time it had become part of the Manchester and Leeds Railway, and then part of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (LYR), which was incorporated in 1847. In July 1885 it was decided to widen the line here, under the resident engineer Augustus Topp. Topp probably designed the Hindley footbridge and it was wrought and built by Walker Bros who were founded in 1866 and moved to Pagefield foundry in Wigan in the 1870s. (The firm went on to make the successful Pagefield motor lorries and cars). The blue engineering bricks of the pier and abutment were made at the Ruabon works of the main contractors for the widening works, Monk and Newell. The scheme was approved in 1887, and the widened lines (9 tracks in total, including a siding from Ladies Lane colliery) opened in 1889.

The bridge serves a footpath which in the 1840s linked various local coal mines. The 1849 Ordnance Survey (OS) 1:10,560 map (surveyed between 1845 and 1846) shows this path making its way southward from the pits of the Ince Colliery to connect with a footpath running east-west between Ladies Lane and Wigan Road. At that date pedestrians would have crossed at track level, as was common at stations at the time. By the time of the 1894 1:10,560 OS map, (surveyed 1888 to 1892), the area to the north of the railway was also home to other industries including steel, brick and coke works, and the bridge served a network of paths accessing these factories, as well as the Ladies Lane colliery (opened after 1848) and the Penny Gate pit.

Hindley Deep Pits to the north of the railway closed in 1891, while Ladies Lane colliery closed in 1908. The LYR became part of a newly-incorporated London and North Western Railway in 1922, which was almost immediately subsumed within the London Midland and Scottish Railway, in 1923, before finally becoming part of British Railways upon nationalisation in 1948.

A historic image of the bridge in a Walker Bros catalogue confirms that the bridge is little altered, with just metal mesh added to the parapets for safety, and probably replacement of the deck surfaces. The finials with lights crowning the portals at either end of the deck have also been damaged. The bridge historically carried signalling equipment, which was removed after signalling rationalisation in 1972.

Reasons for Listing

Deep Pit Railway Footbridge WBS/24, a railway pedestrian overbridge of 1887, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* as an unusually long single-span wrought-iron railway footbridge dating from the peak period of railway footbridge construction;

* for its elegant basket-arched form of bowstring truss, enhanced on the span by swan-necked vertical stays and decorative arched portals with finials, and on the ramp by palmette-capitalled cast-iron supports and splay-footed rail supports;

* surviving with very little alteration, including a setted access from the north.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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