Tow Bridge

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A single arch stone bridge carrying Mary Street over the Tow River.

A single almost semi-circular arch springing from low random rubble walls without breakwaters with a span 4½ metres. The banks of the river meet the rising walls of bridge arch. Arch constructed of pink robust voissoirs and the spandrels on each side are slightly recessed with a horizontal stringcourse at top voissoir height forming a frame to the arch. The abutments and parapet walls are built of a mixture of basalt and sandstone in random rubble work. The soffit of the vault is also random rubble. The abutments extend well beyond the arch end on the west side continue to meet the former harbour wall.

Historical information

Precise date of bridge not known but it appears in its present form on the OS map of 1857 while stylistically its main features, the dressed stone vouissoirs of the arches, may also be approximately dated to the mid-19th century. It is named on the OS map of 1904. A crossing over the Tow river is shown at this position on the OS map of 1832, close to a substantial bridge over the Glenshesk river, of which detailed particulars were given in the OS Memoirs, but the crossing over the Tow is not specifically mentioned in the memoirs and it may be taken to be included amongst the "several smaller bridges and pipes which are not of sufficient importance to deserve description."

References – Primary Sources

1. OS Map 1832, Co Antrim 9.
2. OS Map 1857, Co Antrim 9.
3. Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Vol 24: Parishes of County Antrim IX, 1830-2, 1835, 1838-9 (Belfast, 1994), p 97.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
F. Structural System

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

A pleasing 18th century single arch built in random rubble with good sandstone voissoirs, though arch was probably rebuilt in the later nineteenth cenury. It complments the plesant promenade along the side of the Margy river and is of an unusual design.