Upper Bridge

Five-arch road bridge over river, designed 1834[?]; built 1835-6; dated 1836; extant 1838. Repointed tooled limestone ashlar walls centred on rounded cutwaters to piers having lichen-covered domed capping with cut-limestone stringcourses supporting parapets having cut-limestone coping centred on cast-iron date stone ("1836") in cut-limestone frame. Series of five segmental arches with drag edged rusticated limestone ashlar voussoirs. Sited spanning River Moy.

A bridge erected by Thomas Ham CE (d. 1841) representing an important component of the early nineteenth-century civil engineering heritage of Ballina with the architectural value of the composition, one 'defrayed by subscription [and] the Earl of Arran…in compliment to whom it will be called Arran Bridge' (Lewis 1837 I, 104), confirmed not only by the "sparrow pecked" surface finish offset by sheer limestone dressings demonstrating good quality workmanship, but also by the elegant "sweep" of the arches making a pleasing visual statement at a crossing over the River Moy: meanwhile, a benchmark remains of additional interest for the connections with cartography and the preparation of maps by the Ordnance Survey (established 1824).