Monmouth Viaduct Bridge

The Monmouth Viaduct, also called Chippenham Meadow Viaduct, spans the River Wye at Monmouth. It is a red sandstone bridge with twenty arches and two steel spans. The structure once carried a railway line from Pontypool to Monmouth Troy. Plans to extend it to Coleford were never completed. The bridge was built in ten months using 9,000 cubic yards of masonry and 3,000 cubic yards of concrete. Christopher Firbank designed it and Kennards of Crumlin carried out the construction. The viaduct replaced an earlier wooden plan after floods in 1852. It was not heavily used until the Wye Valley Railway opened in 1876. The Coleford Railway branch ran briefly from 1883 to 1916. Only the stone sections of the viaduct remain today. Large crowds gathered in 1861 to watch the steel spans being lifted into place. The bridge stands about fifty feet above the river. Nearby, the Duke of Beaufort Bridge was built in 1874 for the Ross and Monmouth Railway. It has three steel spans on tubular piers and connects the two former railway stations. After the line closed in 1964, the bridge became a footpath. A Sustrans project plans to restore it for cycling routes. The main span measures forty-six metres, with shorter spans of eighteen metres each. Edward Finch of Chepstow supervised its construction.