Penallt Viaduct

The bridge was built from 1875 and opened in 1876 for the Monmouth and Wye Valley Railway, which was later absorbed into the Great Western Railway. It was designed by the engineers S. H. Yockney and Son of Westminster, and built by the contractors Reed Brothers of London. The line closed to passenger services in 1959 and freight in 1964 but the footbridge remained open to provide a pedestrian route across the river and between the two villages. It is part of the Wye Valley Walk long-distance footpath. In 2012, it and two other nearby former railway bridges over the Wye—one at Lydbrook and the Tintern Wireworks Bridge—underwent a condition survey as part of a project to explore possible…

The viaduct is a single-track structure of five wrought-iron lattice girder spans supported on four pairs of cast-iron columns which have X-shaped bracing between them. Each span is a separate girder and the piers are at right angles to the river current, giving the bridge a sharp skew. A steel footbridge on concrete supports, attached to the viaduct on the upstream side by steel brackets, was added in 1955.