Coagh Bridge over Ballinderry River

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

This is a five-arch cut-stone road bridge, ‘Coagh Bridge’ over a river, built perhaps in 1850. It is faced with ashlar sandstone with cut-stone capping. The capping slopes to the outside face and is flush with the wall surface. The inner wall at road level is squared and snecked stone.
The arches are segmental-headed with rock-faced cut-stone voussoirs. There is a continuous cut-stone stringcourse above the arches. There are rounded and stepped cutwaters to the South, located between the arches. The cutwaters have rock-faced stone to the base, cut stone to the top with smooth domed capping. The bridge is approximately 12 metres in width with a pavement to the North. It is sited at the bottom of the villages main street spanning the Ballinderry River.

Historical information

Although a bridge is shown on this site on Taylor’s and Skinner’s map of 1777 and on the first edition OS map of 1833-34, the present structure’s overall regularity suggests it is a later replacement of perhaps c.1850s.

References- Primary sources
1 ‘Taylor’s and Skinner’s maps of the roads of Ireland’ (Dublin, 1777)
2 PRONI OS/6/6/30/1 OS map, Co. Tyrone sheet 30, 1833-34
3 PRONI OS/6/6/30/2 OS map, Co. Tyrone sheet 30, 1857
4 PRONI OS/6/6/30/3 OS map, Co. Tyrone sheet 30, 1906

Secondary sources
1 McCutcheon, W.A., 'The industrial archaeology of Northern Ireland' (Belfast, HMSO, 1980 [for reference]
2 O’Keefe, Peter and Simington, Tom, ‘Irish stone bridges…’ (Irish Academic Press, 1991) [for reference]

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
F. Structural System
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

A substantial and imposing bridge representing an important element of the late nineteenth-century civil engineering heritage of Cookstown. It is well proportioned with a series of matching arches and offset with protruding cutwaters. It is well detailed with good quality cut stone in a robust style and has been well maintained.

Located to the edge of the settlement the setting has been generally well preserved.