Bennerley Viaduct

Bennerley Viaduct is a wrought-iron railway bridge turned foot and cycle path. It stands across the flat Erewash Valley, linking Ilkeston in Derbyshire with Awsworth in Nottinghamshire. The bridge was built in 1877 for the Great Northern Railway’s Derbyshire Extension. Its engineer, Samuel Abbott, designed it to cross boggy ground undermined by old coal workings. The structure rests on 15 slender iron piers that sit on brick bases without being bolted down. At 433 metres long and 18 metres high, it dominates the wide, open valley. The viaduct is one of very few surviving wrought-iron lattice bridges in Britain. It was once part of a two-mile railway route with embankments and bridges, most of which were removed after the line closed in 1968. Plans to demolish it were abandoned because dismantling the ironwork would have been too costly. It became a listed building in 1974 and was later placed on the Heritage at Risk Register. Restoration began in 2019 and the bridge reopened for walking and cycling in 2022. Visitors walk or cycle along the 8-metre-wide deck, enclosed by lattice parapets. The iron troughs beneath the track ballast give the surface a corrugated texture. The piers, each 17 metres tall, stand evenly spaced along the valley floor. At both ends, brick stubs mark where embankments once carried the railway away. The flat valley makes the viaduct the main landmark, with Ilkeston’s town centre two kilometres to the south.