Historic Buildings Record · Northern Ireland
Derryola Bridge, Derryola Bridge Road, Aghalee, BT67 0DJ
Deer Park, Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon, Northern Ireland
The record
- Designation
- Listed building, Grade B2
- Grade
- B2
- Type
- Bridge
- Date of listing
- 13 November 2020
- Date of construction
- 1820 - 1839
- Address
- Derryola Bridge, Derryola Bridge Road, Aghalee, BT67 0DJ
- Townland
- Deer Park
- Council
- Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon
- Country
- Northern Ireland
- Coordinates
- 54.55305, -6.30093
- Date of survey
- 03 October 2018
- HB reference
- HB14/08/102
Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.
David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries
Shown on 4 historical map sheets, the earliest the 1811 "Ireland." (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries).
The Department's description
Exterior description and setting
Single-span stone-built bridge of perhaps c.1820, carrying a road over a drainage channel. The bridge is located at the junction of Derryola Bridge Road and George’s Island Road, roughly 3km west of the hamlet of Lower Ballinderry, with the drainage channel itself (the ‘Selshan Drain’) extending from the south-east of the bridge to Lough Neagh in the west.
The bridge is constructed in semi-coursed squared rubble and has a relatively small semicircular arch with rock-faced voussoirs. The parapets, the north ends of which have been rebuilt (and possibly extended) in recent times, have concrete coping.
Historical information
The ‘Selshan Drain’ was probably cut in the wake of the report by engineer Thomas Townsend made to the Parliamentary Commissioners in 1813, which recommended the drainage of ‘the bogs and inundated grounds…all round Lough Neagh’. The channel itself is shown on the OS map of 1832 along with ‘Derryola Bridge’.
References – Primary sources
1 ' Map no.6 of the Lough Neagh District…by Thomas Townsend' (1813). Copy available online at https://www.lbrowncollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/BRO-04-BOG-36-P-Lough-Neagh.jpg {accessed 18 Febrauary 2019)
2 OS maps six-inch county series, Co. Antrim sheet 62, 1832, 1857, 1900-01
3 'Report from Her Majesty's Commissioners of Inquiry Into the State of the law and practice in respect to the occupation of land in Ireland', (Dublin, 1845), p.478
Criteria for listing: architectural interest
B. Proportion
F. Structural System
H-. Alterations detracting from building
J. Setting
Criteria for listing: historic interest
X. Local Interest
R. Age
Evaluation
Derryola Bridge is located at the junction of Derryola Bridge Road and George’s Island Road, roughly 3km west of the hamlet of Lower Ballinderry. It is a single-span, semi-coursed, squared rubble-stone bridge. It has a relatively small semicircular arch with rock-faced voussoirs. Constructed in perhaps c.1820, it carries a road over a drainage channel (the ‘Selshan Drain’) which extends from the south-east of the bridge to Lough Neagh in the west. The drain was probably cut in the wake of the report by engineer Thomas Townsend made to the Parliamentary Commissioners in 1813, which recommended the drainage of ‘the bogs and inundated grounds…all round Lough Neagh’. While the north ends of the parapets have been rebuilt in a contrasting stone from the original and with concrete copings, Derryola Bridge is of architectural and historic interest as a local example of a small-arched bridge in the flat rural landscape that surrounds Lough Neagh.
Nearby in the register
- Lake ViewNo type recordedunder 1 mi
- 2 Derryola Island LaneNo type recordedunder 1 mi
- Bridge on Boghead Bridge Road, Aghalee, BT67 0EFBridgeunder 1 mi
- Telephone Kiosk at The Gate Inn, Gawley's Gate, Aghalee, Co AntrimTelephone Kiosk1 mi
Other entries of the same register within about three miles of this one, by straight line.