Bridge at Glynn

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A triple-arched masonry bridge carrying the main road over the Glynn River and over a former mill stream.

Random rubble basalt with dressed stone voussoirs to segmental arches. Piers faced with rectangular cutwaters either side, with later low concrete plinth added to base of each pier and cutwater. Hump-backed, without pavements. Parapets finished with rough stones laid flat. Both parapets rake down over southernmost arch, the western one sweeping round to a side road. A later 19th century wall of rubble abuts each of two northern cutwaters to contain a mill stream separate from the river, run off from it well upstream and emerging from a segmental rubble archway below the garden of an adjacent house and entering the sea at a different point. Attached to eastern face of bridge by modern steel brackets is a metal services pipe which spoils appearance.

The bridge is situated within the village of Glynn close to the coast and has mature trees along the south banks, with house gardens adjacent to north banks.

Historical information

Appears on OS map of 1832; described in 1834 as being “very old but in tolerable repair”.

References - Primary

1. OS Map 1832, Co Antrim 40.
2. Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland: Parishes of County Antrim X, Vol 26 (Belfast, 1994), pp 6, 39.
3. Photograph in Green Collection, UFTM (WAG 391), c 1910.

Secondary

1. D Corcoran, A Tour of East Antrim (Belfast, 1990), p 25 (reproduces a photograph from the Green Collection, c 1910).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This is an 18th century bridge which has undergone minor adaptation in connection with local industry but is otherwise intact, but is not of sufficient special architectural or historic interest to merit listing.