Mike Smith heads to Glossopdale, where he is intrigued by the curious asymmetry of the huge railway viaduct that spans the valley and is fascinated by the carving of a lion that stands on top of Glossop’s railway station
A steam train passing over the Dinting Viaduct Photo: Glossop Heritage Trust The Dinting Viaduct
The opening, in 1845, of a pioneering cross-Pennine railway line between Manchester and Sheffield followed the completion of a great viaduct, 440 metres long and 37 metres high, built to carry the new line over the wide valley of Glossopdale to the railway station at Dinting.
Slater’s Royal National Directory, published in 1850, said: ‘The viaduct is a bridge of sixteen arches; the centre five are constructed of wooden planks, ingeniously bolted together, and resting upon massive stone piers – this bridge is justly reckoned among the ‘railway wonders’ and is indeed, well worth the inspection of the curious in these matters.’
As well as endorsing this description of the viaduct as a wonder of the ‘Railway Age’, White’s Directory of 1857 added that the structure ‘strikes the beholder with astonishment at the daring of the present generation’.
However, as the number of trains passing over the bridge increased, astonishment at the daring and ingenuity of the engineers who had designed it was replaced by concerns that the bridge they had created might prove to be too weak to take the strain of the large volume of rail traffic using it.
A mere 14 years after the viaduct had been completed, the laminated wooden arches of the original structure were replaced by wrought-iron girders, making the bridge much sturdier but rather less pleasing to the eye.
As steam locomotives became progressively heavier over the following decades, new questions began to be asked about the ability of the viaduct to withstand the extra weight it was now being required to carry.
These doubts were addressed, in 1918, by the construction of seven new supporting piers to supplement the existing stone piers that held up the iron girders.
This second strengthening of the viaduct reduced its aesthetic quality yet further, not only because the extra piers were made of blue brick, rather than stone, but, more especially, because they were positioned irregularly to avoid the river and the road that run underneath the bridge.
A viaduct that had attracted so much admiration in its early days became a structure that would often be ridiculed for its curious asymmetry.
Trains have been passing over the Dinting Viaduct in complete safety for 180 years. The only blemish on this record is a terrible accident that took place in 1855 – but this was the result of human misjudgement, rather than any structural deficiency.
On a particularly dark night in the autumn of that year, a passenger train was halted on the bridge to await the departure of a locomotive that was blocking the entrance to Dinting Station, located immediately beyond the northern end of the viaduct.
When their train came to a standstill, three of the passengers thought that it had crossed over the viaduct and arrived at the station. Opening the door of their carriage and peering out through the gloom of the night, the trio mistook the coping of the viaduct’s parapet for the station platform. Alighting from the train, they inadvertently walked straight over the side of the bridge and fell to their deaths.
The Manchester-Sheffield railway line had been designed initially to by-pass the town of Glossop, allowing trains to run straight from Dinting to Hadfield before heading towards Woodhead, where a 5km-long tunnel had been constructed under the Pennines by labourers working in appalling conditions – 30 of them were killed during the excavation.
When Henry Howard, the 13th Duke of Norfolk, realised that the rapidly expanding industries of Glossop might not be able to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the new railway line, he built a spur from Dinting to Glossop over his own land, at his own expense.
After financing the spur, Henry then promptly sold it for £15,244 10s 10d (well over a million pounds in today’s money) to the company that had constructed the rest of the trans-Pennine line.
However, the originator of the splendid new station that had been built at Glossop to receive the branch line was made clear to everyone, because the station buildings were topped by a large sculpture known as the Howard Lion.
The carving of this powerful beast, which represents an animal on the family’s crest, remains as a very noticeable and curious presence in Glossop to this day.
Many of the picturesque, well-preserved buildings of an enclave known as Old Glossop date from the 17th century, when a large area of land in Derbyshire came into the hands of the Howard family, whose head is the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl Marshal and Premier Peer of England.
In the middle of the 19th century, the 12th Duke shifted the centre of gravity of Glossop away from Old Glossop to an area where he was developing a new town centre. He built a Town Hall there in 1838 and followed this by constructing a large Market Hall in 1844.
The work of the 12th Duke was carried on by Henry Howard, the 13th Duke, especially with his building of the lion-topped railway station in 1847. By 1851, this new part of Glossop, often known as Howard Town, contained 60 mills, including cotton-spinning factories, calico printing mills and dying works.
In no time at all, the well laid out civic centre of Glossop, centred on Norfolk Square, was surrounded by countless numbers of grey terraces of workers’ housing. Mercifully, this sprawl was punctuated by a green oasis known as Howard Park, which had been given to the town by Samuel Wood, the owner of Howard Town Mills.
Located just beyond the lower entrance to the park, and on the approach to Glossop Swimming Pool, are two marble lions donated in 1905 by Mr Hilton, the owner of the Monumental Works at Chorlton-on-Medlock. They complement the Howard Lion on Glossop’s Railway Station and are a further compliment to the family that did so much to develop modern Glossop.
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