Gaunless Viaduct – Where Railways, Industry and Centuries of History Crossed Paths

Cockfield Fell is one of those places where the history of County Durham comes at you from every direction — ancient field systems, old mine workings, and the remains of structures that once powered the region. Among them stands what’s left of the Gaunless Viaduct, once one of the most striking pieces of Victorian engineering on the South Durham & Lancashire Union Railway. Designed by Thomas Bouch and opened in 1863, it carried the line across the Gaunless valley on iron lattice spans supported by brick piers up to 161 ft tall and stretching roughly 640 ft across the landscape. The innovation was bold, the ambition unmistakable — a railway built to link east and west straight across the fell.

Today the ironwork is long gone — dismantled in 1964, with two piers removed in 1966 — but several of the great brick pillars remain, standing quiet and weathered on the open ground. They’re surrounded by the story that shaped the fell: the mining scars, the embankments, the tracks of old industries that once kept Durham moving. Capture it from above or walk it on foot, and you can still feel the legacy of a viaduct that dominated this hillside for a century. A reminder that even in a landscape as peaceful as this one, the past is never far below the surface.