ARCUS was commissioned by Derbyshire Consulting Engineers (Derbyshire County Council) to undertake a programme of archaeological building recording of two stone bridge abutments at the site of a replacement footbridge (FP110) across the River Rother, Eckington, Derbyshire. The crossing point of the bridge was located on the route of the former Eckington Tramway, located at NGR: SK 4387 7945. The tramway is a Scheduled Ancient Monument (SAM No.DR252) and the archaeological recording was part of scheduled monument consent issued by English Heritage. The western abutment had previously been partially rebuilt using concrete sandbanks and archaeological recording took the form of photography only. The eastern abutment was almost complete and a stone by stone drawing was produced with additional photographs. A plan and section across the river between the two abutments was also drawn. The fallen masonry from the west abutment had been removed from the riverbed by the bridge contractors ALLRoads and this material was examined as part of the survey. A series of coping stones had been recovered along with a sheared off stone corbel retaining an iron pin. The abutments appeared to be of one phase of construction and it is suggested that they date from the early part of the nineteenth century. They were deliberately designed to counteract the pressure of the water flow of the River Rother, with large curved side walls on the upstream section of the embankments. These walls were built into the river banks and had coping stones fixed with iron ties. In contrast, the downsteam section of walling was shorter and presumably intended to only offer structural support to the tramway bridge. At a height of c0.75m above the water level three stone corbels projected from each abutment. These contained vertical iron pins and would have supported the bridge superstructure for the tramway above. It is unclear whether the bridge would have been made or timber or iron, although a close parallel from Trecynon in South Wales was constructed from iron. A rapid walk over inspection was undertaken of the remains of the tramway embankments leading up to the abutments on either side of the river. The embankment was a free standing linear structure with faced walls of ashlar sandstone blocks. A series of brick and sandstone arches pass through the embankment to allow water to drain from the surrounding floodplain. The embankment appears to be in a stable condition, with localised areas of accelerated decay.
Oliver Jessop (Wed,) studied this question.