Railway Bridge

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

This twin-arch stone-and-brick bridge carries an accommodation road over the former Banbridge – Castlewellan Railway. Although it has two arches, only one was actually used as the line was single track.

Apart from the arch, the bridge is of roughly-dressed rubble blackstone throughout. The abutments and piers are embellished with rusticated, margined quoins. The arches are of segmental profile and comprise three header courses of brick. The parapets are coped with out-projecting rock-faced granite blocks, the tops of which are flat with margined edges. There is a similarly detailed string course around the bases of the parapets’ out-projecting terminal piers; the latter have chamfered granite copings. Angled wing walls retain the artificially-raised road embankment and continue up to merge with the parapet’s end piers. These walls are coped with rock-faced blackstone blocks; those to the north-west wing are missing.

The carriageway carries a single-track road and has a slight hump.

Corrugated metal sheeting has been affixed to the W face of each arch to enclose the spaces within. The former track beds within the arches have also been floored with concrete to form rudimentary animal pens, complete with drinking troughs across their east ends.

The NE end of the bridge is obscured by ivy. Beyond the bridge, the railway track bed has been reclaimed for agricultural use and is no longer apparent.

Setting

Rural
setting. Historic farm buildings and modern bungalow to the north.

Historical information

This bridge lies on the Banbridge-Ballyroney section of the Banbridge-Newcastle line.

This section, known as the Banbridge Extension Railway, had received parliamentary assent in 1861 and was envisaged as continuing on to Rathfriland. Although construction appears to have commenced, the line was never completed and the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) purchased the now bankrupt undertaking in 1877. The line finally opened as far as Ballyroney in 1880. It is presumed that this bridge dates from the period 1877-80 rather than the initial phase of work in the 1860s.

The GNR(I) extended the line to Castlewellan in 1906. In the same year, the Belfast & Co Down Railway Co opened a line from Castlewellan to Newcastle, thus enabling through traffic from Lisburn to Newcastle via Banbridge.

The bridge is marked on all editions of the OS maps from 1903 onwards (although the line and bridge are shown on some 1859 editions, such map plates are undated amendments made subsequently).

The line closed in 1955.

References – Primary sources:
1. PRONI OS/6/3/34/3. Third edition OS six-inch map, Co Down sheet 34 (1903).

References - Secondary sources:
1. W.A. McCutcheon, Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland, p.111 (Belfast: HMSO, 1980).
2. S. Johnson, Johnson’s Atlas & Gazetteer of the Railways of Ireland, p.101 (Leicester: Midland Publishing, 1977).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
F. Structural System

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

A twin-arch stone and brick road bridge over the former Banbridge-Newcastle railway, erected in the late 1870s by the Great Northern Railway (Ireland). Much historic fabric and detailing survives and the double arch is unusual for a railway bridge. It is a good example of the type and represents the development of infrastructure in the district and in the Province.