Survey Data
Reg No
41401816
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Scientific, Technical
Original Use
Bridge
Date
1850 - 1855
Coordinates
268543, 321808
Date Recorded
29/04/2012
Date Updated
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Description
Single-arch masonry railway bridge, built c.1850, carrying Dundalk to Enniskillen Branch of former Ulster Railway over road. Segmental arch with rock-faced rusticated sandstone voussoirs and random rubble stone to soffit. Squared stone parapet walls, with dressed stone copings. Rock-faced rusticated spandrels and squared rubble abutment walls. Squared rubble wing walls projecting at right angles from north and south elevations, coped with dressed stone blocks and terminating in rusticated and margined piers.
Appraisal
The Dundalk-Enniskillen Branch of the Ulster Railway (later subsumed into the Great Northern Railway) opened from Ballybay to Newbliss on 14th August 1855, and was an important transport link between Louth, Monaghan and Fermanagh until its closure in 1959. This well-composed bridge is representative of the skill in engineering and stone-working in the nineteenth century, with rusticated stone voussoirs enhancing the wide elegant arch. The former railway bridge carried the railway over this country road, and is an aesthetically-pleasing structure, serving as a physical reminder of the extent and social and industrial importance of the railway network in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.