Settle Carlisle Railway Conservation Area (SCRCA) The following contemporary account relating to the construction of the Settle - Carlisle railway appeared on page 3 (columns 1, 2 & 3) of the June 28th, 1873 edition of the Lancaster Guardian.
ACTION: FINISH TRANSCRIBING THIS. It is a fascinating and extremely useful report of a visit to the railway works in the Batty Green / Blea Moor area (and the source of many extracts in Mitchell's books). NOT YET FULLY TRANSCRIBED.
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... Batty Moss viaduct, of 24 arches, which will be perhaps the finest piece of masonry on the new line. The first stone of this massive structure was laid by Mr. William Ashwell, October 12th, 1870. There are 23 piers and two abutments. The piers which stand 45ft apart are 13ft wide at the base and 6ft at the top. Eleven of the piers are finished. The centres are in for six arches and the the turning of them in brick was begun on the 9th inst. Twelve piers are nearly at the top and the rest are at plinth level, ??43ft below springing. Every sixth pier is as wide again as the others, so that were an accident to take place all the arches could not fall at once. The viaduct is 1328 feet in length and about 100ft to the level of the viaduct. The blocks of black limestone, some of which contain two cubic yards and weigh from four to five tons, are dug from a quarry in Little Dale beck. It is said this structure will when finished contain 30,000 cubic yards of masonry and 3,000 cubic yards of concrete. About 100 men are employed on this viaduct and as the weather has been for some time remarkably fine, the works under the able management of Mr. Charles and Mr. Walter Hirst have made great progress. The viaduct when completed will be the admiration of all lovers of imposing and massive masonry, and no doubt generations unborn will look upon it with wonder, and think how clever were their forefathers to rear such a structure.
Acknowledgements
The text quoted above was manually transcribed from a 35mm microfilm copy of the newspaper by Mark R. Harvey during a visit to Lancaster Library on July 13th, 2023.