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Charlton Viaduct

Grade II* listed buildings in Mendip DistrictGrade II* listed railway bridges and viaductsRailway viaducts in SomersetUse British English from May 2017
Charlton Viaduct
Charlton Viaduct

Charlton Viaduct is a disused railway bridge in Shepton Mallet within the English county of Somerset. It is a Grade II* listed building.The bridge was built in the 1870s to carry the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway. It carried the railway over the River Sheppey. Originally the stone bridge carried a single railway track but was widened to carry a second track in 1892 using red bricks.It consists of 27 segmental arches each of which has a span of 28 feet (8.5 m). It is on a curve of 30 chains (600 m) radius falling at 1 in 55 from each end to the midpoint. To cope with the curve the arches are strengthened by pilasters.It can be seen from the grounds of Kilver Court where it forms a feature.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Charlton Viaduct (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Charlton Viaduct
Victoria Grove, Mendip

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Wikipedia: Charlton ViaductContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 51.1895 ° E -2.5334 °
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Address

Kilver Court Garden

Victoria Grove
BA4 5NJ Mendip
England, United Kingdom
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Charlton Viaduct
Charlton Viaduct
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HM Prison Shepton Mallet
HM Prison Shepton Mallet

HMP Shepton Mallet, sometimes known as Cornhill, is a former prison located in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, England. When it closed in 2013, it was the United Kingdom's oldest operating prison, and had been since the closure of HMP Lancaster Castle in 2011. Before closure Shepton Mallet was a category C lifer prison holding 189 prisoners. The prison building is grade II* listed, while the former gatehouse and perimeter walls are grade II.The prison was opened before 1625 but was already in poor repair by the end of the First English Civil War in 1646. It was expanded in 1790 but conditions were again criticised in a report of 1822 and further building work was undertaken in the 1820s and 1830s. This included the installation of a treadwheel for those sentenced to hard labour. In 1843 the number of cells was increased by adding a second storey to each wing. The prison was damaged during a fire in 1904. In 1930 the number of inmates had fallen and the prison was closed. Following the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 the prison was reopened as a military prison. It was initially used by the British Army and later by American forces who constructed a new execution block to hang condemned prisoners. It was also used for the storage of important historical documents from the Public Record Office in London, including Domesday Book. Following the war the prison continued as a military "glasshouse" until it was returned to civilian use in 1966. The prison was decommissioned in 2013 and now serves as a tourist attraction, with guided tours and other activities.

Shepton Mallet (High Street) railway station
Shepton Mallet (High Street) railway station

Shepton Mallet (High Street) was a railway station on the East Somerset Railway, serving the town of Shepton Mallet in the English county of Somerset. The station opened in 1858 as the interim western terminus of the line from the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway at Witham (Somerset). In 1862, the East Somerset line was extended westwards to Wells and in 1878 a junction was made in Wells with the Cheddar Valley Railway that enabled through running between Witham and Yatton. By this time the line had been taken over entirely by the Great Western Railway. For most of its life, the station was known simply as "Shepton Mallet", the larger title coming into use in 1949 to differentiate the station in the British Railways era from the town's other station on the unconnected Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway. The S&DJR station, less conveniently situated for the town centre, had been known as Shepton Mallet (Charlton Road) since 1883. Due to the reviews of the Beeching Axe, the station closed to passenger traffic with the withdrawal of services between Yatton and Witham on 9 September 1963. Goods traffic ceased within a year, though goods trains continued to pass through until 1969 with stone from a nearby quarry. The station building survived as a depot for a cleaning company for some years. After it was decided to clear the site for redevelopment, the station building was dismantled in 2008 for use by the East Somerset Railway for a planned new station at Shepton Mallet.