Here the train would have just left Horsmonden Tunnel heading south towards Horsmonden Station in the deepest part of the cutting, the camera was placed high up above the locomotive's boiler thus obscuring the track bed so the pillars were somewhat taller than the picture suggests. The train's funnel hides part of the left hand arch and deep vegetation obscures the right side of the bridge.
This wonderful bridge rose about 45 feet above the track bed, it was never photographed because passengers never saw it (they only saw parts of it's piers from their windows). Being in such a deep cutting it was also inaccessible, and the dense vegetation tended to obscure the view anyway. There is only one stock photo known to exist which is in the British Railways archive and appears on page 114 of Brian Hart's book 'The Hawkhurst Line'. Nobody knows much about this bridge, even the Horsmonden historical society describe it as a 'small bridge'.
Although buried today the bridge is still used to carry cars and passengers along Back Lane as it is now called.
I managed to obtain this blurry image from a recently uploaded You Tube video taken from the drivers cab in 1958. Thanks to my daughter Louisa (who has paint on her p.c) for her help.
The full clip can be found here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO69U5Blvxo
This bridge must have been built in 1891 or early 1892 before Swigs Hole bridge for example because a half mile long embankment was built from North of the tunnel to Yew Tree Green road using the spoil from the cutting (which had to be removed first). Residents on the left of the bridge would have been stranded having to make a long deviation to reach the village, so the engineers would have been obliged to build the bridge quickly. This was the first railway that Colonel Stephens worked on as resident engineer and important because the bridge was possibly his first major construction.
I have informed David Scully the Landscape and Biodiversity officer at Tunbridge Wells Council who was very interested, emailed the Colonel Stephens Society, and Yolanda Laybourne of the Hop Pickers Line Heritage Group who have been successful recently in generating council interest in the Hawkhurst Line.
