Survey Data
Reg No
41401625
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Technical
Original Use
Bridge
Date
1855 - 1865
Coordinates
244860, 318511
Date Recorded
22/05/2012
Date Updated
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Description
Single-arch railway bridge, built c.1860, carrying Clones and Cavan Extension Railway over road. Segmental arch, with rock-faced rusticated and margined voussoirs and squared random rubble stone to soffits. Dressed chamfered sandstone plat-band at impost level of arch. Roughly coursed rock-faced rusticated stone to spandrel walls, abutments, and parapets, margined quoins. Tapered buttress of rock-faced rusticated stone having margined quoins to north-east of arch, continuing to form splayed wing wall. Cement rendered splayed wing wall to south-east, dressed stone coping. Splayed rock-faced rusticated buttresses with margined quoins flanking arch to west elevation. Carriageway much overgrown.
Appraisal
This simple but well-composed bridge formed a component part of the Cavan Branch of the Ulster Railway, later the Great Northern Railway, which was opened by the Clones and Cavan Extension Railway, but built and worked by the Dundalk and Enniskillen Railway. It remains a strong focal point on the landscape, articulated and enlivened by rock-faced rusticated voussoirs which emphasise the skill and craftsmanship of stonemasons and engineers in the late nineteenth century.