Upon leaving the Mythe Tunnel, situated below the eponymous house, the Ashchurch railway crossed the floodplain west of Tewkesbury by means of an embankment built sufficiently high to hold the line away from the floodplain of the River Avon. This embankment comprised several small bridges to enable cattle to pass under it, and ran for some 400 metres across open country.
The embankment was removed in 2013 as part of landscaping works designed to reduce the perennial risk of flooding in Tewkesbury. Those of you with better memories will recall that the news of this work was one of the triggers for my starting this project, determined as I was to photograph the remaining relics of the railway before any more of them were removed.
Pictures of the Mythe Tunnel are quite rare, and this excellent shot from Roger Smith shows the last train to leave Tewkesbury as it approaches the southern portal in 1961. Roger was in the prime location to take this photo, leaning out of a window at the rear of the leading carriage as it was pushed towards Ripple. Looking closely at the picture, it is also possible to see the small bridges in the embankment which were demolished in 2013, more of which below.
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| 'Last train to Upton-on-Severn entering Mythe Tunnel', 14th August 1961 |
The pictures below are not my own, but come from Philip Halling's excellent blog post over on Geograph. The shots show the embankment in 2013, just before it was demolished, and give an idea of its original scope and scale. Whether or not the work has reduced the risk of flooding in Tewkesbury I cannot say, but along with the simultaneous removal of the M50 bridge at Ripple, the destruction of the embankment is a sad loss to local history which I was unfortunately too late to document.
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| 'Railway Embankment at Tewkesbury', March 2013. Used courtesy of Philip Halling via Creative Commons. |
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| 'Bridge Parapets on a Disused Railway', March 2013. Used courtesy of Philip Halling via Creative Commons. |
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| 'Bridge Parapet on a Dismantled Railway', March 2013. Used courtesy of Philip Halling via Creative Commons. |
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| 'Old Railway Bridge', March 2013. Used courtesy of Philip Halling via Creative Commons. |
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| 'View towards Tewkesbury along a Disused Railway Embankment', March 2013. Used courtesy of Philip Halling via Creative Commons. |
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