Road bridge over railway adjacent to 63 Kilmonaghan Road Newry Co. Down BT35 6QD

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Industrial-style metal road bridge with timber-planked deck supported on stone piers over the Dublin and Belfast junction line, built between 1906 and 1928, located on Kilmonaghan Road approximately 5 miles N of Newry, Co Down. It replaces an earlier bridge, from which the stone piers are a probable remnant.

Spanning West-to-East from south side of No.63 Kilmonaghan Road across railway tracks to No.72 Kilmonaghan Road, not in use as a public road bridge but used to access farm dwelling and land.

Rock-faced, coursed stone walling with concrete coping to N side of entrance to bridge on Kilmonaghan Road. Square-plan stone pier (same stonework) with large cut-stone cap with rounded ends and sloped top adjacent to balustrading.

S side of entrance has a small section of dry-walling and an identical stone pier.

Balustrading is constructed of overlapping painted steel diagonal members forming latticework, secured by painted steel rivets at junctions. ‘GLASGOW STEEL’ embossed on horizontal members. ‘Port Talbot Steel Ltd’ embossed on some horizontal members.

Vertical steel fins on outer side of balustrade supported on coursed, cut-stone tall piers (underside of bridge not seen at time of survey, but seen in 2015). Steel I-section beams running transversely beneath timber planking. Timber sleepers laid along length of span forming raised edge between planking and balustrading.

Metal safety grill attached to inside of balustrading.

Setting:
Bridge is located in a rural location, with W end of span situated immediately S of No.63 Kilmonaghan Road. Bridge leads to farmland on E side with views over countryside beyond.

Materials:
Painted metal / timber planking (replacement) / stone walling and piers

Historical information

The current bridge was most likely first constructed in 1850-1 or shortly thereafter, the existing piers being a probable remnant of the earliest bridge. The bridge itself was originally constructed of wood, the ‘Wooden Br.’ being captioned on the 2nd edition OS map of 1861, and it is possible that the present steel structure replicates an original wooden lattice structure. The bridge provides access to a house on the E side of the railway line that was constructed between 1835 (not present on 1st edition map) and 1861. The current bridge has retained a timber deck (replacement) but the supporting structure and parapets are formed of steel bearing the maker’s mark ‘Port Talbot Steel Co Ltd’. This mark dates the structure to between 1906 and 1928 when the steel company was active.

In 1845 an Act incorporated the Dublin & Belfast Junction Railway to build a line between the termini of existing lines at Drogheda (Dublin & Drogheda Railway) and Portadown (Ulster Railway) passing to the W of Newry, and connecting Dublin with Belfast. Work on the line commenced at Drogheda and had reached Killeen, to the S of Newry by July 1850. Meanwhile a line was driven south from Portadown to Goraghwood between 1850 and 1851, and it was most likely during this year that the current bridge was first built. Although various contractors were employed on the line between Drogheda and Portadown, which was divided into six separate contracts, William Dargan, noted railway contractor and entrepreneur, with involvement in a large number of Irish railway projects, was the contractor for the Portadown to Goraghwood section (No 6) of the railway.

The engineer-in-chief employed by the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway was Louth-born Sir John Macneill, a former pupil of Thomas Telford who worked in England and Scotland until the late 1830s when he was recruited by the Irish Railway commissioners to survey and lay out the railway system in the north of Ireland. Macneill was afterwards employed as chief engineer to numerous Irish railways, receiving a knighthood following his work on the Dublin to Drogheda line. In the north, Macneill was engineer to Dundalk & Enniskilllen Railway, the Belfast & County Down Railway, the Downpatrick, Dundrum & Newcastle Railway and the Belfast Central Railway. Macneill was professor of Civil Engineering at Trinity College, Dublin (1842-52) and also designed a bridge over the Royal Canal, which was the first iron lattice bridge in Britain and Ireland. He was responsible for numerous railway bridges and viaducts, including several timber viaducts with masonry abutments for the Dublin & Drogheda Railway. Macneill also designed the Craigmore Viaduct, the Egyptian Arch and the Boyne Viaduct which were completed as part of the works on the Dublin and Belfast Junction line.

The resident engineer for the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway was James Barton, who had been a student of Macneill’s at Trinity. Barton made important contributions to the design of the Boyne viaduct while working with Macneill. He later became a consultant for numerous railway companies, mostly in the north and his obituary named him ‘one of the pioneers of Irish Railway construction and development’.

In August 1850, Sir John Macneill reported to the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway Company on progress with the 16 miles of line from Goraghwood to Portadown under contract to Dargan, ‘The bridges are in a forward state; five of them are very nearly completed with the exception of the parapet, and three others are far advanced’. A year later, in August 1851, Macneill reported that all the bridges (except one over the Cusher River) between Craigmore and Portadown had now been completed. The section of railway between Mullaghglass (to the S of Goraghwood) and Portadown opened to the public on 6th January 1852, but the line from Drogheda to Portadown was not opened until June 1852 after completion of the Craigmore viaduct and it was not until June 1853 that the first train with passengers crossed the Boyne viaduct, thus completing the line between Dublin and Belfast (the Boyne viaduct was initially opened with a temporary structure carrying trains, the permanent structure being completed in April 1855). The present bridge, although on a much smaller scale and arched rather than flat, bears some aesthetic similarities to parts of the Boyne viaduct, particularly in its original design (original drawings of the viaduct are held in the Irish Railway Record Society archive), with a series of tall, narrow stone piers spanned by a deck/parapets having diagonal trusses.

The Dublin and Belfast Junction Company was under some pressure to ensure access for those cut off from the main roads. In 1852 the company was sued by a woman called Collins, who lived in a thatched dwelling near Newry and complained that she was ‘deprived of the old road to Newry’, by the new railway, among other issues.

The bridge bears the maker’s mark “Port Talbot Steel Co Ltd”, a company which was incorporated in 1906 (Glamorgan Archives). The company passed to Baldwins Ltd in 1916 but continued to trade under its former name until November 1928, when the company went into voluntary liquidation (Liverpool Journal of Commerce).

The maker’s mark ‘Glasgow Steel’ which appears on the upper part of the bridge with a ‘crown’ motif at the centre, identifies these elements of the bridge as products of the Glasgow Iron and Steel Company of Wishaw, the crown motif being used for their brands from at least the 1890s. Established in 1844 as the Glasgow Iron Company, the firm became incorporated as the Glasgow Iron and Steel Company in 1888 and continued to manufacture steel until at least the 1950s.

References:
Primary Sources:

1. PRONI OS/6/2/22/1 First edition Six Inch OS map (1835)
2. PRONI OS/6/2/22/2 Second edition Six Inch OS map (1861)
3. PRONI OS/6/2/22/3 Third edition Six Inch OS map (1906)
4. Liverpool Journal of Commerce, Friday 19th April 1929
5. PRONI OS/6/2/22/4 Fourth edition Six Inch OS map (1955)
6. Large scale OS maps 1906, 1955, 1975 (https://shop.centremapslive.co.uk/)

Secondary Sources:

7. Dictionary of Irish Architects (www.dia.ie)
8. Dictionary of Irish Biography (www.dib.ie)
9. Glamorgan Archives - https://glamorgan.epexio.com/en/records/D243/7
10. Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History – www.gracesguide.co.uk
11. McCutcheon, W A ‘The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland’ Belfast: HMSO (1980)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
F. Structural System
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

R. Age
S. Authenticity
V. Authorship
Z. Rarity
X. Local Interest

Evaluation

Industrial-style metal road bridge with latticework balustrading supported on stone piers over the Dublin and Belfast junction line, built between 1906 and 1928, located on Kilmonaghan Road approximately 5 miles N of Newry, Co Down. This bridge replaces an earlier wooden bridge in this location with the existing piers being a probable remnant of the earliest bridge.
The balustrading is constructed of overlapping painted steel diagonal members forming latticework, secured by painted steel rivets. The steel members are embossed with both ‘GLASGOW STEEL’ and ‘Port Talbot Steel Ltd’, the latter dating the structure to between 1906 and 1928 when the steel company was active.
The engineer-in-chief employed by the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway was Louth-born Sir John Macneill, a former pupil of Thomas Telford and a prolific railway engineer, who also designed a bridge over the Royal Canal, which was the first iron lattice bridge in Britain and Ireland. Macneill also designed the Craigmore Viaduct (HB16/24/004), the Egyptian Arch (HB16/23/001) and the Boyne viaduct. In his academic life he was professor of Civil Engineering at Trinity College, Dublin (1842-52).
This bridge retains much original historic fabric and appears to be the only bridge of this era with this type of construction in the Newry and Mourne area and is of local interest.