Batley Viaduct was built in 1848 by the London & North Western Railway, with shared use by the Great Northern Railway whose lines (now closed) met with the L&NWR at Batley. The viaduct is on the main line connecting Manchester and Leeds. Batley was once at the heart of the 'heavy woollen' district of Yorkshire, manufacturing and exporting woollen clothes to the world, an industry now sadly reversed! Many of the former 'dark satanic' mills have survived, with years of grime now removed, revealing the attractive natural stone. This panorama, packed with detail shows only too clearly, the impact that utterly unsympathetic 'tin shed' industrial buildings have in a townscape. To the left, the line snakes its way up the Calder Valley to Mirfield, Huddersfield and onwards Lancashire. To the right is Batley Station with Yorkshire's principal city Leeds some 10 miles distant. The scaffolded spire of the Parish Church of St. Thomas the Apostle can be seen on the horizon and up the line, near the Lady Ann level crossing, someone has decided on this Spring morning that it's time to burn their garden waste!
