Concrete Bridge over the Glenelly River,

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A single-span reinforced concrete road bridge, built 1920, carrying Corramore Road over Glenelly River. Plain string-course to carriageway level with square-plan concrete end-piers with pyramidal coping, each pair connected by plainly detailed cast-iron railing; splayed concrete abutments with further square-plan piers at outer edge, detailed as those to parapet. The carriageway is approximately 4m wide. The bridge is situated in a rural location between Plumbridge and Draperstown.

Roof N/A
Walling Concrete
Windows N/A
Rainwater goods N/A

Historical information

The bridge dates from 1920 and is one of the earliest reinforced concrete bridges in Ireland.

The first edition OS map of 1833 captions a ‘Wooden Bridge’ on the site, but no road is marked. The second, third and fourth editions of the OS map (1854, 1906, 1952-3) show a road crossing the river but do not caption the bridge.

The bridge is dated 1920 according to First Survey Information. It is described as “a reinforced concrete bridge…constructed for the Londonderry county council to the design of their engineer C. L. Boddie, using the Hennebique system of reinforced concrete, the structural details being prepared by Messrs L G Mouchel & Partners Ltd. This is one of the earliest reinforced concrete bridges in Northern Ireland (one of the first four that have been recorded, and the third earliest of those entirely built of concrete) and appears to be in an unaltered condition”.

Dixon also notes that the bridge was one of the earliest to be built using the Hennebique system; ‘An early example is one at Corratory, on a remote mountain road between Draperstown and Plumbridge built in 1920’.(p.194-5).

Rynne details the development of ‘ferro concrete’. “Like stone, concrete is weak in compression, and so to counteract tensile stresses, wrought iron, and later steel rods, were added to reinforce it. In 1854, William Boutland Wilkinson acquired a patent for reinforced concrete beams, which he manufactured from colliery ropes made from steel wire. In the 1880’s, Samuel Hill was using a form of reinforced (ferro) concrete in the construction of buildings at the Penrose Quay railway terminus in Cork.…But it was not until the closing years of the nineteenth century that reinforced (ferro) concrete came into its own through the work of the Frenchman Francois Hennebique, a former stonemason who became a successful building contractor. From the early 1890’s onwards, Hennebique began to take out patents for ferro concrete, which he used in reinforced concrete beams, columns and floor panels. Louis Gustav Mouchel was appointed as the agent for the Hennebique system in Britain in 1897…In Ireland, J. and R. Thompson of Roden Street, Belfast and Fairview, Dublin became Hennebique’s licensee, and the Monarch Laundry in Belfast, completed in 1906 is, on present evidence, the earliest use of this system in Ireland.” (p.173)

References:

Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/6/6/13/1 -First Edition OS Map (1833)
2. PRONI OS/6/6/13/2 -Second Edition OS Map (1854)
3. PRONI OS/6/6/13/3 -Third Edition OS Map (1906)
4. PRONI OS/6/6/13/4 -Fourth Edition OS Map (1952-3)

Secondary Sources

1. First Survey Information, 1993.
2. Dixon, Hugh. “An Introduction to Ulster Architecture.” Second Edition. Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 2008.
3. Rynne, Colin. “Industrial Ireland 1730-1930: An Archaeology.” Cork: The Collins Press, 2006.

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
Z. Rarity

Evaluation

A single-span reinforced concrete road bridge, built 1920, carrying Corramore Road over Glenelly River. The bridge remains largely unaltered, and is significant as one of the earliest reinforced concrete bridges in Northern Ireland. It uses the Hennebique system of reinforcement. The bridge has an unspoiled rural setting, between Plumbridge and Draperstown.