Following a campaign to protect the historically important Cowran Bridge, Skellion Bridge, and Cowran Cutting in Cumbria on the Tyne Valley line between Newcastle and Carlisle, they have been granted Grade II listing by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

The Newcastle & Carlisle Railway, one of the earliest in the world and Britain’s first cross-country, opened in 1936 to connect Newcastle on the east coast with Carlisle on the west. The largest civil engineering project on the line was the construction of Cowran Bridge, Skellion Bridge, and Cowran Cutting.

Cowran Cutting was originally planned to be a tunnel, and when it opened in 1836, it was the largest railway cutting in the country. Its construction required the excavation by hand of a million cubic yards of material from the Cowran Hills to provide a route for the line to Carlisle.

A campaign was launched to preserve Cowran Bridge after one of its walls collapsed onto the railway line below in the summer of 2023. The campaign gained impetus when it learned that Network Rail intended to demolish the remaining original stone walls and replace them all with aluminium picket fencing.

Such a move would have destroyed both the historic appearance of the bridge and part of the area’s heritage.

Coincidentally, Railway 200 is a nationwide celebration of 200 years since the birth of the modern railway, and it is also the 200th anniversary year since a provisional committee was formed to found The Newcastle & Carlisle Railway Company.

Reasons for granting the Grade II listing are their architectural interest, including:

• Francis Giles, a former pupil of John Rennie, designed the structures, as well as the double track, and distinctive, single-span overbridges with vertical wing walls.
• A high level of craftsmanship is shown in the construction, detailing, and surface dressing of the bridges.
• Cowran Bridge and Skellion Bridge represent good examples of the type of bridge designed for the line, and remain largely unchanged since they were built.
• Cowran Cutting was the largest and boldest engineering challenge of the line, and required the removal of almost a million cubic yards of sand and clay.

Other reasons for granting listed status include:

• Their historic interest, with the Newcastle-Carlisle Railway being one of the earliest railway lines in the world and Britain’s first cross-country railway
• Their group value, as they share a functional, spatial, and historic group value with other listed structures on the line, all designed by Francis Giles, such as Gelt Bridge (Grade II*), Corby Viaduct (Grade II), and Corby Bridge/Wetheral Viaduct (Grade I).

Many structures on Britain’s railways already have listed status, including a building at Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire built in 1874 by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, and a footbridge at Stroud in Gloucestershire.