Copyright © 2004 Alan J. White; all rights reserved. Last updated January 2004. Pictures taken 18th December 2003. Click on thumbnail image to see full-size version.
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The Tanfield or Causey Arch is just north of Stanley, County Durham.
It was built by a group of coal owners called the "Grand Allies" to carry a waggonway – an early form of railway for transporting coal. It was built mainly to avoid land owned by the rector of Whickham, who insisted on a heavy wayleave charge.
It opened in 1725 and promptly collapsed! It was rebuilt, and opened again in 1726. The rebuild cost 2,000 pounds sterling. The builder was mason and engineer Ralph Wood.
It is semi-elliptical, and has a span of 105 feet (32 metres), which made it for 30 years the longest single-span bridge in Britain. The deck is some 80 feet (24 metres) above the stream. This was arguably the most ambitious civil engineering feat in Britain since Roman times. It is the oldest surviving single-arch railway bridge in the world.
At peak, 930 waggons a day crossed the arch in each direction. Every 20 seconds a waggon would go by, with on average 50 yards (46 metres) between them.
Landslips damaged the approaches to the bridge a few years after construction, and an alternative route was opened up which took much of he traffic. Furthermore, many of the coal-mines the bridge had served had closed down by 1740. By the 1770s the arch was little used. The waggonway/railway finally closed in 1962, but a section is now run by a private company assisted by enthusiastic volunteers – the Tanfield Railway. The arch was restored by Durham County Council in the 1970s and 1980s.
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