Constructor : built in 1849, engineer John Miller, by the North British Railway, whose St Boswells-Kelso branch met end-on at Sprouston with the Tweedmouth-Kelso branch of the North Eastern Radway.
There are six main segmental arch spans to the viaduct, each of ashlar construction, flanked on either side by four shorter coursed-rubble, semi-circular arches.

The line was singled by the LNER in the 1930s, but in 1948 had to carry Kings Cross-Edinburgh expresses diverted by flood damage from the East Coast Main Line. Last used for passenger trains in 1964, freight in 1968.

The Viaduct's four river piers are extended to one side to support a low-level footbridge, of a type which while supposedly once common, has very rarely survived. The footbridge is 177 feet long, with three simply-supported spans of approximately 50 feet each, each simply supported by 4 ft deep bowstring trusses at either side of the deck. The upper chord of the truss is a 5 in. by 1 in. thick flat bar and the tension member is a 112 in. diameter wrought-iron rod. The rod was tensioned by tightening its end nut against the bulbous flat bar end through which it passes. Though it looks tacked on, the footbridge is thought to date from the same time as the viaduct.

On the north side of the viaduct four piers are extended at a low level above the river to support an iron truss footbridge with This footbridge also dates from ca.1850 and was almost certainly made and erected by C. D. Young & Co. . The viaduct now forms part of The Borders Abbeys Pedestrian Way from Kelso to Jedburgh.

An unusual claim to fame is that this was the scene of the last-ever passenger service provided by British Railways. In 1996 the Viaduct was closed for repairs, and schoolchildren from the village of Heiton who used it to walk to their school at Roxburgh had to be found an alternative route. For the duration of the works the BR Property Board put on a foot replacement bus service!

The riverbank-level footbridge was dismantled and refurbished by National Highways, who reinstated it in July 2022 and who now manage the Historic Railway Estate of redundant structures on both sides of the Border – see https://www.itv.com/news/border/2020-10-27/borders-footbridge-over-river-teviot-to-receive-major-refurbishment

Photo: Walter Baxter / Roxburgh Viaduct; Oliver Dixon Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license 2.0, John Yellowlees