bridge

Single-arch masonry railway bridge, built c.1855, carrying Dundalk and Enniskillen Branch of former Ulster Railway over road. Segmental arch with rock-faced rusticated sandstone voussoirs and dressed stone soffits. Squared rubble stone parapet walls, with dressed stone copings. Rock-faced rusticated spandrel 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. Bridge carrying former railway over river to immediate west, having elliptical arch with rusticated sandstone voussoirs, coursed rubble parapets, stone soffit and plinth, and splayed abutment wall to north-east.

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 bridges which carried the railway over this country road and river serve as a physical reminder of the extent and social and industrial importance of the railway network in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The combination of bridges at this site create interesting and attractive elevations.