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Gatehampton Railway Bridge

Bridges across the River ThamesBridges by Isambard Kingdom BrunelBridges completed in 1838Great Western Main LineRailway bridges in Berkshire
Railway bridges in OxfordshireUse British English from March 2017
2008 05 Gatehampton Railway Bridge
2008 05 Gatehampton Railway Bridge

Gatehampton Railway Bridge, otherwise referred to as Gatehampton Viaduct, is a railway bridge carrying the Great Western Main Line over the River Thames in Lower Basildon, Berkshire, England. It takes the line between the stations at Goring and Streatley and Pangbourne, and crosses the Thames on the reach between Whitchurch Lock and Goring Lock. The western viaduct is the older of the two, having been engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and was constructed at the same time as Maidenhead Railway Bridge and Moulsford Railway Bridge. It was built between 1838 and 1840, opening later that same year. A second phase of work, conducted between 1890 and 1893, involved the construction of the east relief bridge along with the refurbishment of the west bridge. They have become prominent manmade features of the local riverside landscape; on 19 June 1984, they became formally protected as a Grade II listed structure.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Gatehampton Railway Bridge (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Gatehampton Railway Bridge
Reading Road,

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Latitude Longitude
N 51.511666666667 ° E -1.1279166666667 °
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Gatehampton Railway Bridge

Reading Road
RG8 9NG , Basildon
England, United Kingdom
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2008 05 Gatehampton Railway Bridge
2008 05 Gatehampton Railway Bridge
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Basildon Park
Basildon Park

Basildon Park is a country house situated 2 miles (3 kilometres) south of Goring-on-Thames and Streatley in Berkshire, between the villages of Upper Basildon and Lower Basildon. It is owned by the National Trust and is a Grade I listed building. The house was built between 1776 and 1783 for Sir Francis Sykes and designed by John Carr in the Palladian style at a time when Palladianism was giving way to the newly fashionable neoclassicism. Thus, the interiors are in a neoclassical "Adamesque" style. Never fully completed, the house passed through a succession of owners. In 1910 it was standing empty and in 1914, it was requisitioned by the British Government as an army convalescent hospital. It was again sold in 1928 and quickly sold again. In 1929, following a failed attempt to dismantle and rebuild the house in the US, it was stripped of many of its fixtures and fittings and all but abandoned. During World War II, the house was again requisitioned and served as a barracks, a training ground for tanks, and finally a prisoner of war camp—all activities unsuited to the preservation of an already semi-derelict building. In 1952, a time when hundreds of British country houses were being demolished, it was said of Basildon Park "to say it was derelict, is hardly good enough, no window was left intact and most were repaired with cardboard or plywood."Today, Basildon Park is as notable for its mid-twentieth-century renaissance and restoration, by Lord and Lady Iliffe, as it is for its architecture. In 1978, the Iliffes gave the house, together with its park and a large endowment for its upkeep, to the National Trust in the hope that "The National Trust will protect it and its park for future generations to enjoy."

Hartslock
Hartslock

Hartslock, also known as Hartslock Woods, is a 41.8-hectare (103-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in a wooded area on the north bank of the River Thames to the south-east of Goring-on-Thames in the English county of Oxfordshire. An area of 29.4 hectares (73 acres) is a Special Area of Conservation and an area of 10 hectares (25 acres) is a nature reserve owned and managed by the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT). The site is well known for the variety of wild orchids that grow on its sloping grassland, and especially for the monkey orchid (Orchis simia) that grows in very few other places in England.The name Hartslock is believed to derive from the Hart family, who in the 15th century owned a 'lock', probably a wooden construction used to support nets and eel traps, across the river below the woods. This structure no longer exists, having been removed in stages during the 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1915, Hartslock Wood was one of the sites listed by Charles Rothschild, the founder of the Wildlife Trusts, as "worthy of preservation", although the exigencies of the First World War meant that no practical steps were taken to protect it then. In 1950s and 60s, local residents reacted to encroaching agriculture by helping to monitor and protect the orchids, and in 1975/76 BBOWT bought part of the site and established it as a nature reserve. In 1986, the whole site was designated as an SSSI.The site has diverse semi-natural habitats, including species-rich chalk downland, ancient yew woodland, semi-natural broadleaved woodland, riverside fen and scrub. The wood has a variety of tree species including beech and yew, and there is a large colony of badgers. Besides the monkey orchid, several other orchid species, including lady (Orchis purpurea), bee (Ophrys apifera), pyramidal (Anacamptis pyramidalis), common spotted (Dactylorhiza fuchsii), common twayblade (Neottia ovata) and white helleborine (Cephalanthera damasonium), are to be found on the steeply sloping grassland part of the site. A hybrid of the monkey and lady orchids has been reported at Hartslock, the only place in Britain where this hybrid has been recorded.The Thames Path passes through Hartslock Woods. The path is usually at some distance from the river, as this is a stretch of the path that is not based on the old Thames towpath, which is on the opposite bank at this point.