Railway viaduct

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A steel lattice girder bridge carrying a railway line at an angle over the main road and over the Crumlin River. It is comprised of 2 main steel lattice trusses carried on 2 main longitudinal girders, with 10 cross girders, with 6 segmental lattice arches overhead, all painted light grey, and supported on stone abutments. Abutments of snecked basalt rubble with squared corners to quoins; battered side walls to abutments, projecting forward at sides to form rectangular piers; vertical inner face to each abutment, with three shaped iron tie bars to the one on the northern side of the river. Roughly shaped basalt blocking course to abutment piers and raking copings to angled walls to rear of each pier. Small oval metal plaque affixed to inner face at southern end of western truss, and a rectangular metal plaque affixed to outer face of same: both inscribed "Alexr. Findlay & Co Ltd. Bridge Builders. Motherwell 1915."

SETTING: The viaduct stands on the northern edge of the built-up area of the village, with many trees and bushes in its immediate vicinity. It oversails, at an angle, the old stone bridge (HB20/15/031) carrying the main road over the Crumlin River, and also a slip road off it leading into a small country park.

Historical information

Built by Alexander Findlay & Co Ltd of Motherwell, Scotland, in 1915 to carry the Antrim to Knockmore branch line of the Great Northern Railway over both Crumlin Bridge and the main road, and the Crumlin River, under the direction of the engineer to the railway company, F.A. Campion; apparently built to replace an earlier railway bridge or viaduct shown on the OS map of 1858. The present masonry abutments date from the original building of the line, by the Dublin and Antrim Junction Railway, as indicated on the OS map of 1858.

References – Primary Sources
1. Inscription plaques on viaduct (dated 1915).
2. OS Map 1858, Co Antrim 59.
3. OS Map 1920, Co Antrim 59.

Secondary Sources
1. W.A. McCutcheon, The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland (HMSO, Belfast, 1980), p 161 and plate 28.4 (but gives the date as 1919).
2. IHR 7204.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
E. Spatial Organisation
F. Structural System
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

V. Authorship
X. Local Interest
Z. Rarity

Evaluation

This is a comparatively rare example of an open-lattice steel girder railway bridge, which is sited in an attractive location above an old road bridge and a river and forms a conspicuous landmark on a main approach road to the village.