Kennington Railway Bridge

Kennington Railway Bridge
Kennington Railway Bridge
	Kennington Railway Bridge from downstream. Beyond the bridge can be seen the crossing at the confluence of Hinksey Stream.
Coordinates	51°43′17″N1°14′32″W / 51.721345°N 1.242253°W Coordinates: 51°43′17″N1°14′32″W / 51.721345°N 1.242253°W
Carries	Former Wycombe Railway
Crosses	River Thames
Locale	Kennington, Oxfordshire
Maintained by	Network Rail
Characteristics
Design	bowstring bridge
Material	steel
Height	13 feet 6 inches (4.11 m) [1]
Longest span	83 feet (25 m)
No. of spans	3
Rail characteristics
No. of tracks	1
Track gauge	standard gauge
History
Designer	AC Cookson, ACGI, MICE
Constructed by	George Palmer
Fabrication by	Horseley Bridge and Engineering Co Ltd
Opened	1923
Replaces	5-span bridge built in 1863

Last updated September 25, 2019

Kennington Railway Bridge is a railway bridge over the River Thames near Kennington, Oxfordshire between Sandford Lock and Iffley Lock. It carries the freight railway branch line that serves the BMW Mini factory at Cowley. The freight railway is part of the former Wycombe Railway that linked Maidenhead and Oxford via High Wycombe and Princes Risborough.

The River Thames, known alternatively in parts as the Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At 215 miles (346 km), it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the River Severn.

Kennington is a village and civil parish in the Vale of White Horse district of Oxfordshire, just south of Oxford. The village occupies a narrow stretch of land between the River Thames and the A34 dual carriageway. It was in Berkshire until the 1974 boundary changes transferred it to Oxfordshire.

Sandford Lock is a lock on the River Thames in England, situated at Sandford-on-Thames which is just South of Oxford. The first pound lock was built in 1631 by the Oxford-Burcot Commission although this has since been rebuilt. The lock has the deepest fall of all locks on the Thames at 8ft 9in (2.69m) and is connected to a large island which is one of three at this point. The lock lies at the end of Church Lane in Sandford on Thames.

The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the south-west and west of England, the West Midlands, and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838. It was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who chose a broad gauge of 7 ft —later slightly widened to 7 ft ¹⁄₄ in —but, from 1854, a series of amalgamations saw it also operate 4 ft 8 ¹⁄₂ in standard-gauge trains; the last broad-gauge services were operated in 1892. The GWR was the only company to keep its identity through the Railways Act 1921, which amalgamated it with the remaining independent railways within its territory, and it was finally merged at the end of 1947 when it was nationalised and became the Western Region of British Railways.

A tied-arch bridge is an arch bridge in which the outward-directed horizontal forces of the arch(es) are borne as tension by a chord tying the arch ends, rather than by the ground or the bridge foundations. This strengthened chord may be the deck structure itself or consist of separate, deck-independent tie-rods.

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Earlier bridge and replacement

The current bridge replaces a five-span plate girder bridge built for the Wycombe Railway in 1863. In 1914 Great Western Railway engineers noted that some of the screw piles of the old bridge had settled slightly. They wanted to replace the bridge but were prevented by the First World War. Therefore, with the consent of the Thames Conservancy, the GWR shored up the bridge with wooden trestles resting on foundations of bagged cement until the end of wartime restrictions would allow the bridge to be replaced.^[3]

The Wycombe Railway was a British railway between Maidenhead and Oxford that connected with the Great Western Railway at both ends; there was one branch, to Aylesbury.

Screw piles, sometimes referred to as screw anchors, screw-piles, helical piles, and helical anchors are a steel screw-in piling and ground anchoring system used for building deep foundations. Screw piles are manufactured using varying sizes of tubular hollow sections for the pile or anchors shaft.

World War I 1914–1918 global war starting in Europe

World War I, also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the resulting 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide.

In 1923 the new bridge was built parallel to the old one. The GWR had it designed in-house, but contracted its construction to George Palmer of Neath, Glamorgan. The Horseley Bridge and Engineering Co Ltd of Tipton was subcontracted to make the six bowstrings for the three new spans. Each span is 83 feet (25 m) long and weighs 23 tons.^[4]

Neath is a town and community situated in the principal area of Neath Port Talbot, Wales with a population of 19,258 in 2011. The wider urban area, which includes neighbouring settlements, had a population of 50,658 in 2011. Historically in Glamorgan, the town is located on the river of the same name, 7 miles (11 km) east northeast of Swansea.

Glamorgan, or sometimes Glamorganshire, is one of the thirteen historic counties of Wales and a former administrative county of Wales. It was originally an early medieval petty kingdom of varying boundaries known as Glywysing until taken over by the Normans as a lordship. Glamorgan is latterly represented by the three preserved counties of Mid Glamorgan, South Glamorgan and West Glamorgan. The name also survives in that of Vale of Glamorgan, a county borough.

The Horseley Ironworks was a major ironworks in the Tipton area in the county of Staffordshire, now the West Midlands, England.

The GWR transported each completed bowstring from Tipton to Kennington by rail on a pair of Pollen C four-wheeled wagons. At the bridge site each bowstring was lifted into place by two rail-mounted 36-ton cranes.^[5] When the new bridge was completed, the railway was realigned for a distance of 10 chains (200 m) either side to cross the new bridge.^[2] The old bridge was then dismantled and its piers and temporary trestles demolished.^[4]

Halt

At the western end of the bridge is the site of the former Iffley Halt railway station.^[6]

Iffley Halt railway station was built by the Great Western Railway to serve Iffley, a suburb of Oxford; it was actually in Kennington, and not in Iffley.

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Horspath Halt was an intermediate station on the Wycombe Railway which served the Oxfordshire village of Horspath from 1908 to 1915, and then from 1933 to 1963. The opening of the halt was part of an attempt by the Great Western Railway to encourage more passengers on the line at a time when competition from bus services was drawing away patronage. The possibility of reopening the line through Horspath Halt has been explored by Chiltern Railways, the franchise holder for the Chiltern Main Line which runs through Princes Risborough.

Morris Cowley was an intermediate station on the Wycombe Railway which served the small town of Cowley, just outside Oxford, from 1908 to 1915, and again from 1928 to 1963. The station originally opened as part of an attempt by the Great Western Railway to enable to have more passengers access to the line, at a time when competition from bus services was drawing away patronage. The line through Morris Cowley remains open for the purposes of serving the BMW Mini factory, although the possibility of reinstating passenger services has been explored by Chiltern Railways, the franchise holder for the Chiltern Main Line which runs through Princes Risborough.

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References

↑ "Bridge heights on the River Thames". River Thames Alliance. Archived from the original on 24 January 2008.
1 2 Cookson 1923, p. 444.
↑ Cookson 1923, p. 443.
1 2 Cookson 1923, p. 447.
↑ Cookson 1923, p. 445.
↑ Mitchell & Smith 2003 , map IX, fig. 32

Sources

Cookson, AC (1923). "Reconstruction of Kennington Viaduct over the River Thames near Littlemore Station". Great Western Magazine: 443–447.
Mitchell, Vic; Smith, Keith (2003). "Kennington Junction". Branch Lines to Princes Risborough. Midhurst: Middleton Press. ISBN 1-904474-05-5.

Next crossing upstream	River Thames	Next crossing downstream
Isis Bridge (road)	Kennington Railway Bridge	Sandford Lock (pedestrian)

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[1] "Bridge heights on the River Thames". River Thames Alliance. Archived from the original on 24 January 2008.

[FOOTNOTECookson1923444-2] 1 2 Cookson 1923, p. 444.

[FOOTNOTECookson1923443-3] Cookson 1923, p. 443.

[FOOTNOTECookson1923447-4] 1 2 Cookson 1923, p. 447.

[FOOTNOTECookson1923445-5] Cookson 1923, p. 445.

[6] Mitchell & Smith 2003 , map IX, fig. 32