Capel Mill railway viaduct revealed

My old friend John visited me today to drop off a few tools which he is lending me, so that I can get on with joining the wood for the raised beds. We sat chatting and drinking coffee in the sunny garden for a long while, before John suggested a good way to deal with the stakes, the boards and the diagonal slope. Very useful. Even better was his offer to lend a hand if I need it, as he also likes to do job swaps, and can imagine a few tasks that I might help him with.

I went to town to pick-up something for Helena, drop off the library books which I have had too long and to buy a countersink for the screw-holes to come. On the way home I parked near Waitrose, did a bit of shopping and then dropped down the hillside beside the store and walked a short distance down to the River Frome. Here the river flows under Capel Mill railway viaduct, where an earlier timber bridge was originally built for Brunel's broad gauge railway in the 1840s to bring the railway across from the south to the north side of the valley and to enter Stroud station just beyond.

This replacement railway viaduct was built in 1868 for the Great Western Railway to replace an earlier viaduct of timber built in 1840. Capel Mill previously stood on the site. The viaduct is built from dark red and reddish brown engineering brick, with two steel spans. The entire viaduct is made up of twenty-two spans in total. One arch contains a former warehouse of two bays, with segmental arched window openings, which was probably used by the Stroudwater Dye Works.

The viaduct also had to cross over the Thames and Severn canal, which had been built in the 1790s, as well as allow the old Capel Mill building to continue working. The original mill can be dated back to 1489, although the site was known in the 1880s for the dyeworks - Stroudwater Works. Nearby was the large Brick House, which was home to the Capel family; this was demolished in 1964. The canal became disused by the 1950s and in the 1970s part of it was infilled to make way for the current short bypass.

Now that the six mile section of the canal is being re-instated, a new section of canal has to be built so that its route can pass under one of the more central viaducts arches, but it is a very tight fit. The bypass is built where the canal formerly passed under it. A couple of months ago the adjacent land, which had been used as a recent rubbish dump and then allowed to revert to nature, had all the trees and scrub cut down in preparation for the works access onto the steep banks of the valley.

I wanted to get a record of this fine viaduct ,which hasn't been seen so openly for decades. It looks in pretty good condition and I might try to get a shot of a steam engine crossing it next time an excursion visits Stroud and the Golden Valley line on their wat to Sapperton and Swindon.