The photograph shows the ornamental battery at Port Eliot, St German’s, with the original wooden viaduct of the Cornwall Railway behind. The battery is probably mid nineteenth century. It consists of a slatestone rubble wall with six cannon facing out towards the River Tiddy. The low front wall, about thirty metres long, is embattled with slate coping to the merlons. It returns southwards for a similar distance without battlements, finished with a plain slate coping. Two of the guns are dated 1808 and inscribed RUELLE and NEVERS, while another is dated 1617.
The viaduct belonged to the Cornwall Railway, built to the 2.14 metre (7 foot 0¼ inch) broad gauge. The line ran from Plymouth to Falmouth. The section from Plymouth to Truro opened in 1859 when the Saltash Bridge was completed, and the extension to Falmouth followed in 1863. The original section remains open as part of the London to Penzance main line, with the Truro to Falmouth section now operated as a branch. The railway was leased by the South Devon, Bristol and Exeter, and Great Western Railways until 1889, when the Cornwall company amalgamated with its three associates.
A realignment of the line in 1908 required three new viaducts. One of these was at St German’s, a small village on the west bank of the River Tiddy. The stone viaduct crosses the muddy estuary with piers sunk eighteen metres (fifty eight feet) below the water. Its maximum height is thirty two metres (one hundred and six feet). It has seventeen arches and measures two hundred and ninety eight metres (nine hundred and seventy eight feet) in length. It stands close to St German’s Station, a well preserved example of a Cornwall Railway building, single storey, rendered, with flat awnings. The station is Grade II listed.
