Railway Bridge, carrying railway over

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A single arched masonry bridge carrying the railway over the main road, built of snecked basalt with rusticated granite voussoirs to the segmental arch.

Abutments are broken forward to form broad piers with battered faces: granite quoins to piers and to main archway below a projecting plain platband at the springing line, which returns back on each side through the archway. Extending to each side beyond piers are snecked basalt wing walls, to the approaches, terminating in end piers. Moulded sandstone cornice to the main bridge and flanking piers, with plain platband to wing walls. The parapet comprises balustrading over the main span, with ashlar sandstone at the piers, and snecked basalt to the wings; moulded copings to all portions. Balustrading on the south side is new, rebuilt in tinted concrete to pattern of original sandstone balustrading; balustrading on the north side has been partly rebuilt in concrete but retains some of the original sandstone balusters and coping.
Balustrading on each side contains a central recessed rectangular panel, the one on the north side inscribed with the date 1847.
The voussoirs of the archway on each face of the bridge have been later painted alternately in black and yellow while the central portion of the archways appears to have been faced with steel plate, painted as voussoirs.
Vaulting is of brickwork partly rendered with what appears to be later steel plating to the upper part.

SETTING: The bridge stands in a fairly rural area with the embankments of the railway line thickly overgrown with bushes and with mature trees in the immediate vicinity. Immediately to the south is an arched masonry bridge whose parapet extensions abut the railway bridge. Immediately to the north, at the west end, are the grounds of a 19th century house, whose boundary wall also abuts the railway bridge.
Currently (April 2000) the carriageway of the bridge is being re-laid with track.

Historical information

Built in 1847, to carry the railway line of the Belfast and Ballymena Railway Company over the main road, to the designs of the company's engineer and architect, Charles Lanyon; contractor, William Dargan. The contract for the line was advertised in September 1845; contract awarded in October 1845; work started in November 1845; line opened in April 1848. Railway line replaced and parapets of bridge repaired in 2000.

References – Primary Sources
1. Datestone on the bridge.
2. OS Map 1857, Co Antrim 50.
Secondary Sources
1. J.R.L. Currie, The Northern Counties Railway, Vol I (Newton Abbot, 1973), pp 27-45.
2. W.A. McCutcheon, The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland (HMSO, Belfast, 1980), p 167 and plate 36.2.
3. IHR 1339.187.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
F. Structural System
H-. Alterations detracting from building
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

V. Authorship
X. Local Interest

Evaluation

This is a good example of an early Victorian railway bridge of distinctive style and proportion, of conventional design and construction but of special interest due to its known authorship and date, as well as its status as a local landmark. It enjoys a pleasant and unspoiled setting and together with the adjacent road bridge over the river forms part of an attractive group, despite some later inappropriate alterations.