Camus Bridge over Mourne River

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Camus Bridge spans the River Mourne in an unspoiled rural
setting approximately 1.1km NNW of Victoria Bridge, with grassed banks and open pasture to either side. The bridge is half way between Strabane & Omagh on the 120km Great Northern Railway (Ireland) line from Portadown to Londonderry and has been abandoned since the closure of this section in 1965.

A five-span steel plate girder bridge, erected c.1910, which carried the GNR(Ireland) 'Derry Road', formally the Londonderry & Enniskillen Railway, over the Mourne River, the present bridge replaced a timber structure erected by the former operator.

The bridge is aligned north-south, and consists of two main-span riveted plate girders with a secondary internal plate girder structure to carry the road bed, on longitudinal baulk sleepers. While the running rails have been removed, the raised horizontal check rails and support structure are extant. The bridge is supported on five pairs of circular steel, concrete filled piers, each with a profiled head and tied by a steel cross brace. To each embankment is an abutment of rock-faced basalt, built to courses and with moulded stone string at carriageway level. There are tooled ashlar piers to the east abutment only, at both ends of the bridge. At the south end the flat capstone is inscribed 'CAMUS BRIDGE'.
While the bridge span and supporting piers are single track, the abutments are constructed for double track.
The running rails have been removed and the north approach embankment is in place. The southern approach embankment has been removed and the southern abutment is now retained to the cavity by shuttered concrete. There is a high level road over bridge (IHR 00017:070:00) 90m south of the southern abutment and the railway roadbed & cutting are visible beyond.

Setting:
The Camus Bridge is located half way between Strabane & Omagh on the 120km Great Northern Railway (Ireland) line from Portadown to Londonderry. It spans the River Mourne in an unspoiled rural setting approximately 1.1km NNW of Victoria Bridge, with grassed banks and open pasture to either side.

Materials:
Span: Riveted steel plate girders and latticework
Piers: Concrete filled steel caissons
Abutments: Rock-faced basalt, built to courses

Historical information

The bridge first appears, captioned, on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1855, as part of the ‘Londonderry & Enniskillen Railway’. However, it was replaced c.1910. By the third edition (1905) the name of the line has changed to ‘Great Northern Railway (Ireland)’.

McCutcheon comments on the development of the railway,“The Londonderry & Enniskillen Railway Company was incorporated in 1845, authorised to construct a single-track line of railway extending southwards from a Londonderry terminus…Work began soon afterwards and by April 1847 the single-track line had reached Strabane…The cost of construction was relatively low, about £10,000 per mile…However, due to the shortness of the line, storm damage…and competition from the Strabane Canal and Foyle Navigation, this first section of the company’s line was not a great commercial success. It was not until the construction of the line to Omagh, reached in 1852, Fintona (1853) and Enniskillen (1854) that the full benefits of the railway became apparent. Undoubtedly the new line of rail communication brought important commercial advantages to the towns which it served, and indirectly, to the agricultural lands, both arable and pastoral in character, lying along the valleys of the Foyle, its headstreams and tributaries, and to the flanking upland areas to both east and west. Omagh and Strabane, in particular, emerged as major market centres from which goods could be conveyed northwards to the port of Londonderry. ” (p.109-110)

The Londonderry and Enniskillen Railway eventually amalgamated with other lines, starting in 1860 when it was “leased to the Dundalk & Enniskillen Railway Company, subsequently the Irish North Western Railway Company, for 99 years …The INWR was absorbed by the Northern Railway Company on 1 January 1876 and this in turn merged with the Ulster Railway Company on 1 April 1876 to form the Great Northern Railway Company (Ireland).” (p.110-1)

The original bridges on the line were replaced in 1910-11, “Between Newtownstewart and Strabane, several of the earlier cast-iron girder trellis bridges, which in turn had replaced the original timber bridges put up by the Londonderry & Enniskillen Railway Company around 1850, were themselves replaced in 1910-11 by enclosed troughs of riveted iron sheets supported on massive steel girders e.g…Breen Bridge…and Camus Bridge”. (p.162) The bridge itself was constructed by Alexander Findlay & Co. of Motherwell, an engineering firm founded in 1888 who came to specialise in 'steel bridgework'. One of Findlay's employees, Thomas Neeson of Sion Mills, was drowned when working on the bridge in November 1911.

During the post-war period the railways faced increasing competition from road transport and in 1953 the GNR ceased to exist as a separate and independent company. “In that year the entire system was acquired jointly by the Governments of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and was subsequently operated by a Board consisting of representatives of the two governments. In 1958 the greatly diminished portion of the former Great Northern system which lay within Northern Ireland passed under the absolute control of the Ulster Transport Authority” A period of contraction followed in which many lines deemed to be unremunerative were closed down. (p.119)

TOWNLANDS Camus, Ir. Camas - 'river bend'; Seein, Ir. Sian - 'fairy mound'

References - Primary Sources
1. PRONI OS/6/6/10/2 – Second Edition OS Map (1855)
2. PRONI OS/6/6/10/3 – Third Edition OS Map (1905)
3. 'Londonderry Sentinel', p.7 - 25 November 1911
4. PRONI OS/6/6/10/4 – Fourth Edition OS Map (1951)

Secondary Sources
1. McCutcheon, W.A. “The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland,” London: HMSO, 1980

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
F. Structural System
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest
S. Authenticity
R. Age
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance
Z. Rarity

Evaluation

Camus Bridge is an early-twentieth century steel plate girder railway bridge located half way between Strabane & Omagh, on the 120km Great Northern Railway (Ireland) line from Portadown to Londonderry. It is situated 1.1km north-north west of Victoria Bridge in a rural setting in open pasture, carrying the former Great Northern Railway (Ireland) line (previously the Londonderry & Enniskillen railway) over the Mourne River.
Although the line dates from the mid-nineteenth century, the current bridge dates from a period of improvement along this line, c.1910. The third structure on the site, Camus Bridge marks the progression of technological advancement in structural engineering terms, the structure being a significant determinant of the architectural form. It has group value with the nearby Breen Bridge (HB10/06/022), which has similar constructional elements. Camus railway bridge is an important historical feature within the locality, with social importance in the form of improved transport links in a rural region and it is a rare example of steel railway bridge, with only four others listed in Northern Ireland. As much physical evidence of the railway line is now gone, this is a good example of a largely intact steel railway bridge which retains historic authenticity.