Hockley Railway Viaduct
bridge in United Kingdom
The Hockley Railway Viaduct is a disused railway viaduct to the south of Winchester in Hampshire, England.
History
The viaduct, originally called the Shawford Viaduct, was built in the late 1880s by the London and South Western Railway (LSWR). It provided a link over the River Itchen and water meadows, from the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway (DN&SR), to the LSWR's main line. The DN&SR was originally intended to continue down the east side of the Itchen to Southampton, but had stalled at Winchester due to lack of funds. The viaduct crossed the valley to link the DN&SR to the LSWR, which ran (and still runs) down the west side of the valley.
The viaduct was last used by the railway on 2 April 1966. The line it carried closed as a result of the Beeching Axe, and is now open to walkers and cyclists as part of National Cycle Network Route 23.
Construction
The structure has 33 spans. Although it appears to be a brick structure, the viaduct in fact has a solid concrete core in its pillars and the bricks have only an aesthetic function. The bricks came from the Poole Brickworks in Wellington, Somerset, and the blue engineering capping bricks from Blanchards at Bishop's Waltham.
The public source identifies “Hockley Railway Viaduct” as bridge in United Kingdom. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hockley, Railway and Viaduct.
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The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5875820. Authority coordinates are 51.037, -1.321. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1966.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hockley Railway 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.