Survey Data
Reg No
41401824
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Technical
Original Use
Bridge
Date
1850 - 1855
Coordinates
269865, 321207
Date Recorded
29/04/2012
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Single-arch masonry railway bridge, built c.1850, carrying embanked Dundalk to Enniskillen Branch of former Ulster Railway over Dromore River Upper. Elliptical arch, with margined rusticated stone voussoirs and rubble stone soffit. Squared stone parapet walls, with rusticated stone copings. Random rubble spandrels and squared random rubble abutment walls. Squared rubble wing walls following line of Dromore River to south, coped with dressed stone blocks terminating in rusticated and margined piers. Located east of Shantonagh Junction, former railway beam bridge directly to west.
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 stoneworking in the nineteenth century, with rusticated stone voussoirs enhancing the tall, elegant arch. The former railway bridge carried the railway over Dromore River Upper 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. A masonry road bridge spans the river to the west, and the railway line continued west to Shantonagh Junction over a beam bridge, since dismantled.