It was completed in 1877 and carried the Great Northern Railway's (GNR) Derbyshire Extension over the River Erewash, which forms the county boundary, and its wide, flat valley.

The site required a bespoke design as the ground would not support a traditional masonry viaduct due to extensive coal mining.

It was once part of a chain of bridges and embankments carrying the railway for around two miles (three kilometres) across the valley but most of its supporting structures were demolished when the line closed in 1968.

Railway Paths, a walking and cycling charity, acquired it for preservation in 2001 but work faltered due to a lack of funding.

Most of the viaduct is in Awsworth, Nottinghamshire, but the western end is just north of Ilkeston in Derbyshire; the River Erewash forms the boundary between the two counties.

The Midland Railway already occupied the most obvious paths and so the GNR had to take a more difficult route, which required multiple bridges, tunnels, and viaducts.

Among several branches from the main route, one diverged just east of Awsworth and continued north up the Erewash Valley; another served Bennerley Ironworks (since demolished).

Bennerley Viaduct was built immediately south of the ironworks site, which is roughly mid-way between Nottingham and Derby.

[3][8][10] According to Graeme Bickerdike, writing in 2016 in the magazine Rail Engineer, the design was based on the Viaduc de Busseau [fr], opened in 1864, in central France.

[11] The bridge deck consists of 16 spans, each 77 feet (23 metres) long and formed from four 8-foot (2.4-metre) deep wrought-iron Warren lattice truss girders braced together horizontally and vertically.

[1][11][12] Because of the corrugated surface provided by the troughs, the volume of track ballast required was half that of a traditional flat-decked bridge.

The terminating brick pier at the eastern (Awsworth) end was built into an embankment on which the line continued towards Nottingham.

Passenger services were withdrawn in 1964 and Bennerley Viaduct closed altogether, along with the rest of the line, in 1968 as a result of the Beeching cuts.

The derelict land around the bridge became a wildlife haven, though the area also attracted anti-social behaviour and there were several incidents involving people attempting to climb the piers and falling off.

[8] British Rail applied for planning permission to demolish the viaduct in 1975 and 1980, partly due to persistent trespass—there were several incidents of people injuring themselves after falling from the viaduct—but both applications were rejected.

[19] In 2007, the viaduct was added to the Heritage at Risk Register as its condition had deteriorated to the point that it was in danger of irreparable damage,[24][25] and it was the only site in the United Kingdom on the 2020 World Monuments Watch, a list published by the World Monuments Fund to highlight heritage sites "in need of urgent action that demonstrate the potential to trigger social change through conservation".

It noted corrosion to the ends of the troughs on the bridge deck, damage to brickwork from frost weathering, and missing rivets among the minor defects.

An application for further Heritage Lottery funding to enable the viaduct to be opened to the public was rejected at the end of 2017, leaving it with an uncertain future.

[28] Ben Robinson, Historic England's Principal Advisor for Heritage at Risk, said "The importance of this viaduct cannot be underplayed.

[29] The work included repairs to the ironwork, the bases of the piers, and abutments and partial reconstruction of the parapets at the eastern end.

[22][29] The viaduct twice featured on the television series The Architecture the Railways Built, once in the inaugural episode in 2020 and once during the restoration work.

[8] The journalist Matthew Parris (formerly a Derbyshire MP) visited during restoration work in 2021, and wrote in a column for The Times: "It is, on one view, a hideous thing; and on another a precious and remarkable monument to early railway engineering".

He references Bennerley Viaduct in several, most prominently in the novel Sons and Lovers, which includes the lines "There was a faint rattling noise.