BRIDGE

The Department's description

Historical information

A road is marked along the approximate line of the present Cloughmore Road / Bridge Street on maps from at least 1714, and this is shown specifically crossing the Rostrevor River on a map of 1755, suggesting there was a bridge in place at that date at least.

The OS Memoirs of 1836 describes the bridge at that time as an ‘old plain structure of unhewn stone, 70 feet long and 25 feet broad, over the Kilbroney or Rostrevor River which it crosses by three arches.’ Overall this sounds not wholly dissimilar to the present structure; however the current bridge’s seemingly neatly formed elliptical arches could indicate a later rebuild or perhaps a modification of that which existed in the 1830s. Photographic evidence from the late 19th and early 20th century shows the bridge without the rendering around the arches and the parapets, and looking altogether distinctly more rustic, suggesting that it is indeed the same ‘old’ bridge recorded in 1836, and as such may be of the 18th century.

The rendering to the parapet and arches appears to have been applied in the later 20th century.

References - Primary sources
1 PRONI T1117/1 ‘A new map of Ireland…by Herman Moll’, 1714
2 PRONI T1763/2 Map of County Down by Oliver Sloane, 1739
3 HERoNI Map of County Down by James Kennedy, 1755
4 OS map, Co. Down sheet 54, 1834
5 NLI STP_1203 Stereo paired photograph of ‘Old Bridge, Rostrevor’, c.1870
6 NLI STP_1204 Stereo paired photograph of ‘Old Bridge, Rostrevor’, c.1870
7 NLI EAS_1531 Photograph of ‘Old Bridge, Rostrevor’, c.1910