Castlefield Viaduct
railway viaduct in Manchester, Greater Manchester, England, UK
Castlefield Viaduct is a 330-metre (1,080 ft) long former railway viaduct built in 1893, which used to carry heavy rail traffic in and out of the Great Northern Warehouse, located in the Castlefield area of Manchester, England.
The Grade II listed viaduct was designed by Heenan & Froude, the same engineering company behind Blackpool Tower. The viaduct is part of the Historical Railways Estate and since 2022 approximately a third of its length is a sky park.
Design
The viaduct consists of eight steel spans, all to a similar design, totalling 330 metres (1,080 feet) in length and supported on large cast-iron columns which have castellated finials. It is part of a network of railway bridges and viaducts in the Castlefield area. It is on a fork from the line feeding Manchester Central railway station; the fork served Great Northern Warehouse on Deansgate in the city centre. A nearly parallel viaduct built by the Cheshire Lines Committee (also Grade II listed) now carries tram tracks for the Metrolink network.
History
The viaduct was completed in 1893 and closed in 1954, at the same time as the warehouse it was built to serve. It was built by Heenan & Froude, a local engineering firm. The viaduct was used as a backdrop to several television series, including the Manchester-set soap opera Coronation Street.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q26580338. Authority coordinates are 53.474, -2.260. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1893, 2022 and 1954.
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This entry incorporates text from “Castlefield Viaduct” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.