Headstone Viaduct

Headstone Viaduct, built by the Midland Railway, over the River Wye, immediately after the 533-yard (487 m) Headstone Tunnel, travelling north from Great Longstone. The viaduct, usually incorrectly called Monsal Dale Viaduct, is 300 feet (91 m) long, with five 50-foot (15 m) span arches, some forty feet high at the centre.

The sight of the viaduct outraged artist and writer John Ruskin, who fumed: “You might have seen the gods here morning and evening, walking in fair procession on the lawns, and to and fro among the pinnacles of its crags, but the valley is gone and the gods with it, and now every fool in Buxton can be in Bakewell in half an hour, and every fool in Bakewell in Buxton.”