The Stockton and Darlington Railway had to cross the Skerne River, and it was originally intended that George Stephenson should erect a stone and iron bridge.

However, when the similar Gaunless Bridge he had designed had to be rebuilt after suffering flood damage, the railway directors told him to consult Ignatius Bonomi.

Shortly before the opening, in August 1825, the Revd John Skinner sketched the bridge as it was originally built.

He added curved flanking walls, holding back earth ramparts, that shored up Bonomi's failing embankments.

To celebrate their fiftieth year in 1875, they commissioned John Dobbin to paint the original opening day.

He, assuming that little about the bridge had changed, portrayed it as it appeared in 1875–complete with curved retaining walls–in his reconstruction of the 1825 opening scene.

The widened trackbed has since been removed, since 1967, leaving only the stone piers, and a single track still using the original arches.