Tag Archives: railway bridges

Dog Kennel Bridge on the Coleford Branch in the Forest of Dean

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The Coleford Branch between Monmouth and Coleford replaced an earlier tramroad. The Monmouth Tramroad, linked Monmouth with Coleford and opened in 1810. It was the first rail transport in the immediate area.

The Monmouth Railway, 1817, ©Afterbrunel and authorised for reuse under a Creative Commons Licence (CC BY-SA 4.0). [4]

Wikipedia tells us that the “Monmouth Railway Act was a Parliamentary act from 1810 (50 Geo. 3. c. cxxiii) that authorized the construction of a 3 ft 6 in gauge plateway, a type of early tramroad, from mines east of Coleford to May Hill in Monmouth, running through Redbrook. The purpose was to create a toll road for carriers to transport coal and iron ore, but it would not be operated by the company itself. The line opened in stages between 1812 and 1817.” [4]

For just under half a century this was the only ‘railway’ serving Monmouth. This was true for even longer in respect of Coleford.

It is of interest that this line was originally planned to be at the core of a significant network. It had a long tunnel near Newland and is thought to have been the first railway to include a paying passenger service within its Act. [1]

The original tramway bridge (pictured towards the end of this short article) was a low timber girder on stone abutments crossing a minor road serving a couple of farmsteads. This created a large loop up this side valley, which initial plans for the railway involved amputating and replacing with a gently curving viaduct.

Viaducts are expensive, however, and taking a straight course means going a shorter distance and consequently trains would have to climb more steeply. So the viaduct was dropped from the plans and replaced by a huge embankment which made a smaller loop up the side valley. Through this embankment passed the new bridge for the minor road. Although it is a rather large structure (particularly by single arch standards), the top of the arch is still well below the top of the embankment, which carried a minor single track railway. It now carries an overgrown trackbed which is about the same width as the road below. The railway was built to last and, 92 years after the last train to Monmouth from Coleford, the Dog Kennel Bridge remains in excellent condition.

Dog Kennel Bridge, seen from the Northwest on Whitecliff. The featured image at the head of this article is a photograph taken by me on 3rd September 2025. It shows the same structure, seen from the Southeast on the same minor road. The featured image is repeated below. [Google Streetview, March 2025]
The featured image for this short article is a photograph of Dog Kennel Bridge as seen from the Southeast. The bridge is unusual, being more like one span of a tall viaduct than a single-span arches bridge. [My photograph, 3rd September 2025]
The red dot marks the location of Dog Kennel Bridge. The line of the branch can be made out as two parallel lines of trees which pass to the West of the ‘flag’ marking the position of Whitecliff Ironworks. [Google Maps, September 2025]
The extract from the 25″ Ordnance Survey of 1900, published in 1902, shows the location of Dog Kennel Bridge in relation to the small town of Coleford. The bridge is in the extreme bottom-left of the map extract. Coleford’s two adjacent stations feature in the top-right of the map extract. [2]
The red dot marks the location of Dog Kennel Bridge. [Google Maps, September 2025]
The 25″ Ordnance Survey of 1900, published in 1902, shows the GWR single-track line crossing Dog Kennel Bridge. The earthworks for the older Monmouth Railway are visible running across the map extract on the South side of the GWR line above Whitecliff Villa, passing under the GWR line to head further up the valley before curving tightly over the road. [3]

Dog Kennel Bridge carried the Coleford Railway, which ran from Wyesham Junction, near Monmouth, to Coleford, over a minor road between Whitecliff and High Meadow Farm. Construction of the line began in 1880, the contractors being Reed Bros & Co. of London, and it was opened on 1st September 1883. In common with other underbridges on the line, Dog Kennel Bridge is predominantly of stone, but the arch is made of brick. It has massive stone abutments and wing walls. The smaller stone bridge abutments of the Monmouth Railway, which the Coleford Railway replaced, are still visible about 100 metres up the lane (SO 56321007) where the old tramroad crossed the valley on a much sharper curve. [5]

The abutments of the tramroad bridge remain on either side of Whitecliff. This is how they appear from the Southeast. [Google Streetview, March 2025]
The tramroad (Monmouth Railway) bridge abutments seen from the Northwest. [Google Streetview, March 2025]
The relative positions of the older tramroad bridge and Dog Kennel Bridge. [Google Earth, September 2025]

The GWR’s Coleford Branch closed by 1st January 1917, most of the track soon being lifted for the war effort. [5]

References

  1. https://booksrus.me.uk/gn/page%2096.html, accessed on 4th September 2025.
  2. https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=14.8&lat=51.79209&lon=-2.62401&layers=168&b=ESRIWorld&o=100, accessed on 5th September 2025.
  3. https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=17.4&lat=51.78774&lon=-2.63287&layers=168&b=ESRIWorld&o=100, accessed on 5th September 2025.
  4. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monmouth_Railway, accessed on 6th September 2025.
  5. https://forestofdeanhistory.org.uk/learn-about-the-forest/dog-kennel-bridge, accessed on 6th September 2025.