Gisburn Tunnel
railway tunnel in Lancashire, England, UK
Gisburn Tunnel is a short railway tunnel on the Ribble Valley line in Lancashire, England. The tunnel is 157 yards (144 m) long, just to the east of Gisburn railway station, curving slightly under Gisburne Park. The tunnel was reputedly built at the behest of Lord Ribblesdale, who didn't want the railway across his land. The line through the tunnel connects Blackburn, Clitheroe and Hellifield, and is an important railway route for freight trains.
History
The tunnel, which is 157 yards (144 m) long, is sometimes referred to as either Gisburn Park, or Gisburn Hall Tunnel. It was opened to goods traffic in March 1880, when the railway line from Gisburn station (just to the west of the tunnel) was opened to Hellifield. Previous to this, the railway had a temporary terminus in Gisburn railway station. Full opening of the line to passengers occurred on 1 June 1880. The extension of the East Lancashire Railway (by that time, the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway) needed to go through Lord Ribblesdale's estate (Gisburn Park). Ribblesdale refused to allow the railway to cross his grounds in case it frightened his horses, so a cut-and-cover castellated tunnel was built instead, and the course of the railway was altered from the plans so that the trackbed could not be seen from Gisburne Hall.
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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 Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q113827575. Authority coordinates are 53.937, -2.264. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1880.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gisburn Tunnel” 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.