Wire Rope Tramway

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Carr's Face is an inclined wire-rope tramway, which runs from a granite quarry on the northern slopes of Chimney Rock Mountain to the Bloody Bridge River. The difference in height between its two ends is approximately 120m.

The railway survives as a series of wooden sleepers, on parts of which the single-track line survives (with one passing place comprising three parallel lines).

Its lower terminus is now indeterminate, but the top end finishes at a winding drum beside which are the remains of a tripod crane. The extensive quarry, from which large slabs of granite were extracted, rises above, towards the summit of the mountain.

Historical information

Robinson’s of Annalong worked the quarry and line. Although neither is marked on the 1938 OS 6" map, they probably started in the 1920s. According to McDowell, the opening of quarries such as this and the adjoining River Quarry (operated by Hamilton's) became feasible with the coming of lorries which were capable of hauling out the quarried stone. This was apparently taken down to the roadside at Bloody Bridge for manual dressing into setts and kribben (cobblestones and kerbstones). During the 19th century such a line also worked between Thomas's Mountain and Newcastle Harbour, but nothing of it remains.

Primary sources:
1. PRONI – OS 6/3/49/4.
2. W.E. McDowell, The extractive and allied industries of the Mournes, Co Down (unpublished BA thesis, Dept. Geography, QUB 1965).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This is the only surviving wire-rope tramway in the Mournes and may be the only one in Northern Ireland.

An unusual landscape feature and of local interest in the context of this area’s once-thriving granite industry.