Edgwarebury: Derelict railway viaduct

Image: © Nigel Cox Taken: 30 Oct 2008

These odd brick remains in the fields east of what is now the A41 Edgware Way are the only surviving civil engineering reminders of the proposed extension of London Underground's Northern Line beyond Edgware to Bushey Heath. The extension was proposed as part of the 1935 - 1940 New Works programme. A reserved corridor for the railway was left between the housing developments north of Edgware station and this viaduct was constructed to carry the railway over low ground near Edgwarebury Brook and up to Brockley Hill. However the onset of the Second World War brought a halt to construction and after the war the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act gave Green Belt status to all the open land north of Edgware which had previously been earmarked for housing. Without the housing it was thought that the railway would have had little traffic and little purpose and the proposed extension to Bushey Heath was truncated to a station at Brockley Hill in 1950, and the entire plan was abandoned in 1953. The reserved corridor was then sold off for housing and the infill estates of Campbell Croft, Shelley Close, and Sterling Avenue in Edgware were built. The viaduct itself has gradually crumbled away leaving only the brick piers and short sections of the arches beyond the springer points, as visible in this image.

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