Viaducts of the S&C
“It is, quite simply, a symbol of Britain-as-spearhead throughout the railway age, and an icon of the island itself”
EDGAR Sanderson, in his expansive 1899 work The British Empire in the Nineteenth Century, describes John Sydney Crossley’s Ribblehead Viaduct as “one of the finest of these structures, surrounded by scenery of impressive grandeur”. It is an assessment that still stands today, with the magnificent Ribblehead (or perhaps more correctly, Batty Moss) standing strong among Britain’s most enduring icons of Victorian railway engineering.
Crossley designed this 24-pier, more than 1300-foot long viaduct for the Settle to Carlisle Line: the highest and, many would argue, most picturesque of Britain’s great main line routes. The 72-mile line traverses the Pennine Hills, which posed significant topographic hurdles for Crossley, making Ribblehead just one of 21 viaducts he built along the line over the six years from 1869 to 1875, using 6000 navvies.
In this feature we travel from Settle to visit six of Crossley’s largest viaducts at Ribblehead, Dent Head, Arten Gill, Dandrymire, Smardale and Ormside, tracing their histories and survival. After savouring the keynotes on our trip to Carlisle, we then take in some lesser-known gems on the return journey, all testament to the treats on offer along this popular recreational railway route.
Orphaned during infancy, Crossley came into the care of an architect whose son, engineer Edward Staveley, trained him. He proved himself an apt pupil, cutting his teeth working on canals and docks.
His first introduction to railways came in the 1830s, but it was from the mid-1840s that he began to specialise in the area, and by the late 1850s had been engaged as chief engineer to the Midland Railway Company. It was for this company that
