Draft:Railway arches in London

The London and Greenwich Railway viaduct at London Bridge station.

Many railways in London were built on viaducts composed of a succession of brick arches. The space under these arches has been used for almost everything any other building could be used for, from residential accommodation to aircraft manufacture.

In 2019, Network Rail sold its portfolio of railway arch properties to Telereal Trillium and Blackstone Property Partners, together trading as The Arch Company. A tenants' organisation, Guardians of the Arches, was formed to coordinate responses to this.

See also

• London Bridge – Greenwich Railway Viaduct 1836
• Nine Elms to Waterloo Viaduct 1848
• Short Brothers 1903 (balloon manufacture, prior to the official founding of the aircraft company)
• "The railway arch where A.V. Roe in 1909 built and achieved the first all-British powered flight still stands in the Lee Valley Park in Hackney. " 1909
• Turbine Theatre 2019

Sources

• "Network Rail's sale of railway arches - National Audit Office (NAO) report". National Audit Office (NAO). National Audit Office. 2 May 2019. Retrieved 21 December 2023.
• Hedger, Tony (22 May 2019). "Brewery news – May 2019 – London Drinker". The London Drinker. CAMRA. Retrieved 29 December 2023.

External links

• Arches used by Battersea Dogs & Cats Home 1906
• Underneath the Arches: The Afterlife of a Railway Viaduct GER viaduct in E London
• Image: interior of Short Brothers arch September 1906

• A 2017 thesis: Railway Arches: A Refuge for London Businesses in the Context of Rising Property Prices.
• Academic paper from European Planning Studies in 2017: Pragmatic urbanism: London’s railway arches and small-scale enterprise
• From the Imperial War Museum: AIR RAID SHELTER UNDER THE RAILWAY ARCHES, SOUTH EAST LONDON, ENGLAND, 1940
• Provision of Dwelling by Appropriating Railway Arches in The Builder: Volume 24 (20 October 1866) p. 772., which says: In and about London there are thousands of railway arches belonging to the various companies. Some few of these are used as shops, a few more as warehouses and workshops; but the great majority are, at the present moment, totally unoccupied and unproductive...
• Kellett, John R. (1969), The Impact of Railways on Victorian Cities p. 345: which says: The railway arch was, of course, a functional necessity for many of the approach routes, if they were to avoid the wholesale street closures and level crossings, against which Parliament had set its face. All the early hopes that arches might be turned to advantage miscarried, however, and within a few years they became symbols of all that was shabby and down-at-heel ....
• The Arch Co
• Guardians of the Arches Organisation of railway arch tenants
• Guardians of the Arches - more up-to-date?
• The London Drinker CAMRA publication - many small breweries occupy arches
• The Guardian: Story of the arches at Hackney Walk
• Froy, Francesca; Davis, Howard (2 November 2017). "Pragmatic urbanism: London's railway arches and small-scale enterprise". European Planning Studies. 25 (11): 2076–2096. doi:10.1080/09654313.2017.1367141.