Bridge over Railway

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Single-span rubble stone road-over-railway bridge, located to north of Whitehouse Park, to east of Shore Road carrying private road over the Belfast-Larne railway line.

Random rubble abutments, spandrels and parapets; single segmental-headed arch with rusticated voussoirs springing from banded imposts. Flat masonry coping to parapet.

Setting

Carrying road through Whitehouse Park over a deep railway cutting with well-planted embankments. Modern concrete bridge farther north.
Roof N/A
Walling Rockfaced random rubble
Windows N/A
RWG N/A

Historical information

The bridge is not named on the first and second edition OS maps of 1832 and 1857.

James Boyle’s Ordnance Survey Memoirs from 1839 describes a bridge at Whitehouse with ‘three small arches, circular, each ten span by seven high, [the] wall [is] a hundred and seven feet long by three and a half high by one and a half thick and twenty nine feet on top...[and this] divides Drumadrough from Whitehouse’. This bridge predates the railway so it is not likely to be the bridge in question.

The mid-nineteenth century was a time of great progress and expansion in the rail network. J Currie’s ‘The Northern Counties Railway’, details the development of the North Eastern railway from Belfast to Ballymena This venture was planned in 1836 and proposed a railway line to travel by ‘the Whitehouse shore, Templepatrick and Antrim with power to make a branch to Carrickfergus….’ (p, 25). This track vastly improved communications and transport links within rural east County Antrim. By 1847 Stations had been built on the main line at Greencastle, Whiteabbey, and Carrickfergus. (p, 40). Apparently the Reverend Mr Bland was concerned about the condition of Whiteabbey Station, particularly as the ‘ladies’ had to mingle with the ‘public’ and in 1863 a new station for Whiteabbey was authorised at a cost of £300 (Currie, p 121).

References

Primary Sources:
PRONI OS/6/1/57/1 - First Edition Ordnance Survey Map (1832)
PRONI OS/6/1/57/2 -Second Edition Ordnance Survey Map (1857)

Secondary Sources:
1. Currie, J. R. L. ‘The Northern Counties Railway’. Vol 1:1845-1903, David & Charles: Newton Abbey, 1973.
2. Boyle, James. Ordnance Survey Memoirs. Vol 2, April 1839.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

A simply detailed single-span road bridge over the railway to the north of Whitehouse Park, well preserved and with detailing remaining intact. It is of a relatively common type of which there are better examples along this line.