Railway Bridge

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A single semi-elliptical arch carries a field accommodation track over a single-line railway.

The bridge is of roughly squared limestone blocks throughout. There are shallow buttresses (with tooled quoin margins) to each side. The voussoirs are rock faced (?sandstone), with tooled inner margin. A finely-dressed sandstone string course wraps around each quoin at arch spring level (but does not continue through the arch).

The parapets are coped with large rock-faced limestone blocks which project slightly beyond the outer faces of the bridge. They terminate in out-projecting piers.

Historical information

This bridge was built to carry a country road over what was originally the single-track railway line between Clones and Cavan. This line was opened in April 1862 as a new extension by the Dundalk and Enniskillen Railway (D&ER), and the bridge itself may be dated to 1860-61 when much of the construction work on the line took place. It was probably designed John Stokes, the D&DR’s resident engineer, possibly assisted by James Barton, the part-time engineer-in-chief.

The D&ER merged with the Londonderry and Enniskillen Railway (L&ER) in July 1862 to form the Irish North-western Railway (INWR) which was in turn subsumed into the Great Northern Railway (GNR) in 1876. The Clones and Cavan extension remained in use until 1960, with the line marked as ‘dismantled’ on the OS map of the following year.

References – Primary sources
1 ‘Dundalk Democrat, and People’s Journal’ – 12 April 1862, p.1
2 ‘Longford Journal’ – 12 April 1862, p.4
3 OS map 6inch County Series, Fermanagh sheet 40 – 1857 (revised c.1865?), 1907; IG sheet 262 - 1961

Secondary sources
4 S. Johnson, Johnson's Atlas & Gazetteer of the Railways of Ireland (Leicester, 1997)
5 Geraghty, P.J., “The Dundalk and Enniskillen Railway: An undertaking so full of hopeful promise” in ‘Clogher Record’, 2013, Vol.21 No.2 (2013), pp.1-48

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

A single semi-elliptical arch constructed of roughly squared limestone blocks carries a field accommodation track over the former Clones and Cavan railway line which was opened in 1862 by the Clones & Cavan Extension Railway, a single-line railway. It is located approximately 6.5Km east of Newtownbutler, Co Fermanagh. While the bridge provides an important link to this period of railway development, it is not of sufficient architectural or historic character to meet the legislative test for listing.