Footbridge at 12 Drumreagh Road, Ballygowan, Newtownards, BT23 6LJ

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Single-span segmental-arched rubble-stone hump-backed footbridge, pre-dating 1835, spanning shallow section of the River Blackwater on private farmland east of Ballygowan. Hump-backed profile without parapets or abutments, random rubble-stone footings and cementitious repairs to east and west elevations. Grass and earth back with rubble-stone surface partially visible beneath. Remains of banked lane extending approximately 10m to north; remains of rubblestone embankments to south-east, otherwise river has earth banks.

Set directly south of replacement farmhouse with courtyard of farm buildings to north, accessed from Drumreagh Road. Farmland
setting with curtilege grazing plot to north and field boundary to south comprising bank of mature trees; evidence of former lanes to north-east and south-west.

Construction material: Rubble stone

Historical information

The footbridge at Drumreagh Bridge predates the 1st edition of the OS map (1835) and was probably constructed in the late-seventeenth or early-eighteenth century. Although the adjacent farm buildings have been largely replaced, at their core the structures follow an architectural footprint dating to at least the early-nineteenth century, and are present on the 1st edition. This map shows another bridge to the west of the farm leading to Drumreagh Road which has since been replaced. To the east a pair of stone-walled lanes are depicted which terminate rather abruptly within fields to the south-east. The footbridge crosses the River Blackwater into farmland leading towards a small structure which no longer survives, and a lane leading back west to the road. The 2nd edition map (c.1862) shows further walled boundaries to the south of the bridge and indicates that the walled lanes were also tree-lined, suggesting that the bridge formed part of a substantial organisation of the landscape. This map shows more clearly that the two lanes to the east lead into large fields to the east. The northernmost of these lanes is visible from the bridge, retaining its tree-lined aspect and (according to information from the owner) retains its stone walls; the southernmost of the two lanes has been removed due to enlargement of the fields, but a small portion of the stone wall is believed to remain at the eastern end. The lane to south also remains in part.

These lanes and bridges between historic farmsteads reflect an informal rural network in the hinterland around Saintfield and Ballygowan, likely to have become established around the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century settlement of eastern Ulster by Scottish settlers, and also more generally representative of a national context of improvement and reorganisation of rural infrastructure in Ireland. Historic OS maps show many other examples in the vicinity including on the estate of Florida Manor to the east. It is unclear whether the lanes and bridges at Drumreagh formed part of a network maintained for the rural farmers by owners of the Manor, of the type commonly constructed by local landlords to improve communications across their lands. In particular, landlords could apply to county Grand Juries for reimbursements of the heavier cost of bridge building following an act of 1634 (Cronin). Unfortunately, the precise dating of similar small bridges constructed around this date is generally frustrated by the loss of Grand Jury records during the early 1920s. Such lane networks arose following the reclamation of boggy or remote farmland in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries in Ireland, which was then limed to improve its yield. The opening up of more extensive areas of farmland led to an increase in individual (rather than clustered) farmsteads in the Irish countryside which necessitated the small and interconnected local lanes (bóthríní) between farms and demesnes (Aalen). They were commonly ordered around the divisions of demesne lands or notable features to the reduce costs of removing obstacles. The OS maps indicate that the terrain around the bridge and farm at Drumreagh was historically boggy which suggests that it might reflect such a scheme of land reclamation.

Griffith’s Valuation (1861) confirms that the vast majority of the townland of Drumreagh was owned by the Gordon family of Florida Manor (HB24/17/032). The estate was established in 1638 by Sir James Montgomery and was owned by the Crawford family from the late-seventeenth century, later inherited through his wife by Robert Gordon in c.1770. The 2nd edition map shows that the Florida Manor Pound, where stray animals would be secured and returned, lay a short distance to north of the footbridge, adjacent to the main Drumreagh Bridge which carries the Moss Road over the River Blackwater. The farm adjacent to the bridge was tenanted by a family called Gibson at this time. Ballygowan does not appear in Taylor and Skinner’s road maps of Ireland in 1777, indicating that it lay outside of the postal coach network at the time. These larger projects of the eighteenth century were usually the work of engineers and were characterised by long straight roads, bridges with larger abutments, and less regard for obstacles and physical features. Later rationalisations of road networks in Ireland from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries frequently obscured the legibility of the earlier landscape of dense lanes by cutting through them, and this, together with changes in field boundaries, mean that such networks of lanes are now increasingly rare.
Information from the Listing Query file suggests that only one other similar example of a stone bridge in this form was known in an Ulster context, in Castletown near Ballynure, which has now been destroyed.

References
Primary Sources
1. PRONI OS/6/3/16/1 – First Edition Ordnance Survey Map 1835
2. PRONI OS/6/3/16/2 – Second Edition Ordnance Survey Map 1864
3. PRONI OS/6/3/16/3 – Third Edition Ordnance Survey Map 1900-1906
4. PRONI OS/6/3/16/4 – Fourth Edition Ordnance Survey Map 1905-1957
5. PRONI VAL/2/A/3/16A – Griffiths Valuation field map 1861
6. PRONI VAL/2/B/3/19 – Griffiths Valuation field book 1861

Secondary Sources:
Aalen, F., Whelan, K., and Stout, M. (1997) Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape. Cork University Press, Cork.
John Cronin & Associates and Arup. (2009) Historic Road Bridges. Fingal County Council.
(http://www.fingalcoco.ie/media/Fingal%20Historic%20Bridges%20Volume%201.pdf)
Rynne, C. (2006) Industrial Ireland 1750-1930: An Archaeology. The Collins Press, Cork.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

B. Proportion
F. Structural System
H-. Alterations detracting from building
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

R. Age
Z. Rarity
T. Historic Importance
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance
W. Northern Ireland/International Interest
S. Authenticity

Evaluation

The bridge at 12 Drumreagh Road is a rare surviving example of a rubble stone footbridge, likely to date from the early settlement and tenancy of the lands belonging to Florida Manor, which was established in the mid-seventeenth century in the context of Scottish settlement in the area. Although simple in form, the bridge is of sufficiently robust construction to have survived over at least two, possibly three centuries, and is representative of a network of farm lanes, once common in the Ulster countryside, now increasingly rare. The bridge has been subject to inappropriate repairs in recent years, but it is believed to be the only known example of its type in Northern Ireland, and as such is of national interest.

General comments

Listing Query ref: HB24/LQ051