Bramhope Tunnel

Bramhope Tunnel is on the

In the mid-1840s

The tunnel was planned to be 3,344 yards in length but during construction it was extended to 3,743 yards.[3] The cost of building the whole line was estimated to be £800,000 but the final total rose to £2,150,313 (equivalent to £237,310,000 in 2021)^[9] by 1849 because of costs incurred for labour, unforeseen extra costs for tunnelling at Bramhope and work in Leeds and on the Arthington Viaduct. At a shareholders meeting in September 1848 it was reported that only 100 yards of new ground were left to be penetrated and Bray stated it would be possible to run a locomotive through the tunnel in the following May.^[10]

Work on the tunnel cost the lives of 24 men.^[5] The grand opening was 9 July 1849, a week later than intended, but the first train, full of Leeds and Thirsk railway officials, pulled by Bray's locomotive Stephenson, went through a few weeks earlier on 31 May.^[5] The railway was opened to the public on 10 July.^[11] When built it was the third-longest rail tunnel in the country.^[12] The Leeds and Thirsk Company was renamed the Leeds Northern Railway shortly after the line was completed.

Since 2016 most services on the line through the tunnel are operated by the

Two sighting towers were built at a cost of £140

Work was carried out by up to 2,300 navvies and 400 horses were brought in for the work. The workforce included 188 quarrymen, 102 stonemasons, 732 tunnel men, 738 labourers and 18 carpenters. Each day around 2150 wagon loads of rock and earth was removed from the workings to be tipped on the Wharfe embankment leading to the Arthington Viaduct.^[7]

Men were lowered by bucket down the airshafts to dig by

For four years the workmen, some of whom brought their families, lived in 300 temporary wooden bothies either in a field alongside the offices and workshops, opposite the cemetery, or elsewhere along the line of the tunnel. Day– and night–shift workers lived up to 17 per hut taking turns to use the beds in unsanitary conditions.^[15]

Workers' children overwhelmed the village school. It had been built by the township copyholders and freeholders on Eastgate in 1790.^[15][16] There were originally 30 children but their number increased fourfold, and with a grant of £100 from the railway company the school building was enlarged to accommodate them.^[17][15] The workers and their families used St Ronan's Methodist Chapel in Bramhope and the Methodist Chapel at Pool-in-Wharfedale. The Leeds Mission spread bibles and tracts to families who lived in the bothies.^[5]

Many navvies had been farm labourers from the Yorkshire Dales, North East England and the Fens, or had come for work from Scotland and Ireland.^[5] Drunkenness and fighting was such that Jos Midgeley, a railway police inspector, was hired for £1.25 per week to keep order. At one time he was attacked by a group of men, and at Wescoe Hill, two miles away on the opposite side of the River Wharfe, a riot occurred when the contractors tried to cut off the beer supply to keep the men sober enough to work.^[17]

What is visible today

Four of the twenty construction shafts were retained as ventilation shafts.^[14] One of the two sighting towers, a tall, cylindrical sandstone structure, two metres in diameter with four vertical slits near the top and flat coping stones is still standing in the field opposite Bramhope cemetery.^[18] The other one, now demolished, was behind Dyneley Hall. About 250,000 cubic yards (190,000 m³) of sandstone and shale spoil was tipped close to the ventilation shafts along the line of the tunnel. One of the tips is in an area around the scout hut north of Otley Road through to the Knoll, another is south of Breary Lane, one is in a field opposite the cemetery and another near None Go Bye Farm.^[3]

The sandstone sighting tower, the north and south portals and the retaining walls to the south portal are all Grade II listed structures. The portals are on Network Rail land with no public access.^[a] The southern portal at the Horsforth end is a plain sandstone horseshoe-shaped arch with rusticated voussoirs below a cornice and a parapet.^[19] It is approached by a slightly curved 300-metre cutting faced with sandstone retaining walls. They have a concave batter, slightly projecting piers at regular intervals and are topped with square coping stones.^[20]

During the Railway Mania period in which the tunnel was constructed, the powerful landowners often had a strong influence on the railways being built on their land, and it was due to the demands of William Rhodes of the adjoining Bramhope and Creskeld Halls that the north portal is to an intricate

A southbound passenger train and a pilot engine left Arthington station on 19 September 1854 heading for Leeds. A pilot engine had travelled northbound through the tunnel earlier the same day with no problems but this time the train ran into a pile of stone debris and was derailed when it was three-quarters of the way into the tunnel. The debris was from a roof fall that affected both tracks. The train engine collided with the pilot engine tender causing considerable damage.^[22]

Trains have been cancelled or delayed because of flooding in the tunnel. Water still runs fast into the tunnel, and in the 1960s a train was derailed by a 3-ton (3.3 tonne) icicle.^[8]

Repairs

Major repair work was done in 2003 and 2006, when the Victorian drainage culvert was replaced and the track lowered to allow access for larger passenger and freight stock at a cost of £10 million.^[23][24] The 16 closed airshafts were deteriorating and had to be re-capped.^[25] In 2003 the excavated material from the works was recycled to shore up the railway embankment near Castley.^[26]

Human cost

Records of death and injury were kept from 1847 to 1849, and grants were made to the Leeds Infirmary and a special sprung handcart was provided to transport the injured to hospital.^[3][5]

Five men died in 1846, twelve died in 1847 and seven more had died by 1849. The 24 men who died are commemorated in Otley churchyard by a Grade II listed monument in the shape of the north portal.^[27] It was erected by the contractor.^[3]

The sadness of the harsh conditions of those days is captured by the simple epitaph on the gravestone of James Myers who is buried in the Methodist Cemetery at Yeadon behind the Town Hall. James was a married man just 22 years old who 'died by an accident in the Bramhope Tunnel on the 14th day of April, 1848'. Next to him lies the body of his 3 years old daughter who died two weeks later of some unspecified illness.^[5]

See also

• Listed buildings in Bramhope
• Listed buildings in Guiseley and Rawdon

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bramhope Tunnel.

• Bramhope Tunnel Memorial video
• Leeds Intelligencer, Saturday 14 July 1849 p.6 col4: Leeds and Thirsk railway, opening excursion A detailed commentary on the first public journey along this line

53°53′23″N 1°36′45″W / 53.88972°N 1.61250°W / 53.88972; -1.61250 (Bramhope Tunnel)