Cirencester branch: Thames bridge question

[whole diary]

[Mark A]

A complicated structure, being rail over road over river. It's long gone, presumably it imposed a wriggle on the road there. The culvert that carried the river Thames beneath both road and rail has survived, mind, and at some stage the railway gave its interior a lining of 1890s era blue brick. Do photos exist of the railway viaduct though, does anyone know?

Mark

https://i.postimg.cc/90Fx9FFp/cirencester-branch-thames-bridge-1000.jpg

[stuving]

Try this:  https://kembleandewen-pc.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Dennis-Moss-and-photographs-of-Kemble-and-1Ewen.pdf
At the end of the document are a couple of photos identified as "Kemble, the first bridge over the Thames, Clayfurlong Bridge, 1904". The road bridge looks very much like it does now, and the railway bridge is just a rather fuzzy shape in the background. However, it's clear that it (and the embankment) were very high.

[Mark A]

Thanks for this. So... a single, substantial & distinctive masonry arch. Somewhere, I've read some derogatory comment about it (the author biassed by their feelings for this modern-world intrusion into the world of the upper Thames). Perhaps it did put a kink into the road, or perhaps someone was keen to demolish it for the masonry, which elsewhere on the Cirencester branch is good stuff.

Good to have a name too: Clayfurlong bridge (marked as a viaduct on some OS^▸ (Ordnance Survey) maps).

(The photos are from the same negative - in the tinted one, someone's removed the figure...)

It was quite a dramatic crossing of the valley. Here's the view from upstream, the gap slightly lost in trees.

Mark

[Mark A]

The A429 at Kemble, crossed beneath the Cirencester branch, and then within a mile, beneath the Thames and Severn's Smerril aqueduct, which itself lasted into the 1960s, many years after the canal was formally abandoned. I don't have the dates for the removal of either but the two events must have happened within a very few years of each other. Below is a link to a LIDAR view of that part of the world courtesy of the usual place. Removal of the rail bridge must have involved a fair few lorryloads of arisings, where it was taken is anyone's guess.

Mark

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=15.8&lat=51.68459&lon=-2.01089&layers=206&b=LIDAR_DTM_1m&o=0