The design is similar to that of Bushey Arches Viaduct, the previous major structure on the line in the Birmingham direction.

It was built by Robert Stephenson, chief engineer of the London and Birmingham Railway, which fully opened in 1838.

A second bridge was built alongside to the east in 1858 and 1875 to allow the railway line to be quadruple-tracked; unlike at Bushey, the widening here was in brick and in a style sympathetic to the original.

[1][2] The viaduct is the subject of a lithograph and features in another of the adjoining embankment, both by John Cooke Bourne in his account of the building of the London and Birmingham Railway.

Matt Thompson of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust described the viaduct's appearance in the lithographs as "almost like a Roman aqueduct" and yet a "clean, white modern structure" that blends in with the landscape, which includes grazing livestock—the area was open countryside when the railway was built.