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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

The viaduct de la Sonnette, also located in the commune of Saint-Claud, was built between 1902 and 1905 under the direction of the engineers Draux and Laclôtre. This railway structure, which is 209 metres long and 25 metres high at its maximum point, consists of eleven arches of fifteen metres open in the middle. It is one of the last viaducts built of stone before the advent of reinforced concrete, marking a technological transition in the history of French railway infrastructure.

The materials used come largely from the local quarries: the rough moellons come from nearby limestone quarries, while the trimming moellons and cut stone, hard blue granites, were extracted from Nontron quarries in Dordogne. The guardrail is made of cast iron, and the shelters at the top of the buttresses are masonry. The roadway, originally designed for a railway track, is now railless and covered with the old ballast, while the sidewalks are granite.

The viaduct was listed in the Inventory of Historic Monuments by order of 27 September 2004. It is now owned by the municipality and bears witness to the ingenuity of the construction techniques of the time, while illustrating the evolution of the materials used in the works of art at the beginning of the twentieth century.

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