Arch and Walling

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

The remains of a cliff path partly cut from the rocks and partly laid in concrete, which skirts the base of the Gobbins cliffs. The entrance to the path is through a rock cut archway with an inscription (‘The Gobbins’) cut alongside it and there are some scant remains of some of the original ironwork of safety railings still to be seen, but most has been swept away and it remains both derelict and too dangerous to follow for more than a very short distance.

Historical information

The Gobbins Cliff Path was the initiative of B.D. Wise, engineer to the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway, who was responsible for its design (the small entrance archway being traditionally known to locals as ‘Wise’s Eye’); first portion completed in 1902 in time for the visit of the British Association which met in Belfast that year; extended in 1908; closed in 1940 due to lack of maintenance resources; re-opened 1951 but after a number of landslides carried much of the path and structures away, officially closed in November 1961. Originally intended by Wise to stretch 5 1/5 kilometres with a northern exit at Heddles Point but barely exceeded 3 1/5 kilometres and always remained a cul-de-sac. The most unusual engineering structures, the tubular metal bridges connecting the ‘Man O’War’s Stack’ to the main path, one of them being almost 21 metres long, were built in Belfast and then hauled out from Whitehead on barges and laboriously lifted into place.

References - Primary

1. Photographs in Green Collection, UFTM (WAG 516, WAG 521 and WAG 524, all c 1910).

Secondary

1. J.R.L. Currie, The Northern Counties Railway, 2 vols (Newton Abbot, 1973 and 1974), pp 250-253.
2. W.A. McCutcheon, The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland (HMSO, Belfast, 1980), plate 38.
3. P. Larmour, Building for Tourism at the Turn of the Century; the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway, Ulster Architect (October 1984), pp 12-16.
4. D Corcoran, A Tour of East Antrim (Belfast), pp 46-49 (reproduces photographs from the Green Collection showing bridges intact).
5. Belfast Telegraph, 10 October 1997, p 10.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

An interesting development originally in terms of building for tourism and in relation to its engineering difficulties but with virtually nothing of its original ironwork structures now remaining.