Railway Bridge, Crawfordsburn Country Park, Crawfordsburn, Bangor, Co Down

This highly skewed single-arch stone and brick bridge carries the double-track Belfast-Bangor railway over a single-lane accommodation road on the left bank of Crawfordsburn Glen. The abutments and piers are of randomly-sized rock-faced sandstone blocks with rusticated, margined and vee-jointed quoins. A chamfered sandstone string course, each block of which is rusticated and margined, runs through the arch at spring level and around the tops of the quoins. The arch is of semicircular profile. It has vermiculated, margined and vee-jointed voussoirs, all of which splay out to form the spandrels. A string course detailed as that through the arch runs across the tops of the spandrels at arch crown level. The arch soffit is of skew-set dark-purple bricks which spring from a serrated sandstone course along the top of each string course. The parapets are of roughly-faced random blocks with finely-dressed sandstone copings, all in sandstone. There are three shallow pilasters along each parapet – one approximately in line with each quoin and one directly over the crown. The parapets continue out beyond the outer pilasters and have margined rustication at their ends. A modern two-bar galvanised steel handrail is affixed to the top of each parapet. A low cement-rendered wall continues for a short distance beyond the W end of the S parapet to retain the track ballast. There are shallow tapered buttresses at the SW and NW ends of the bridge. They are of rock-faced random sandstone blocks, embellished with quoins detailed as those on the abutments. Slightly battered wing walls retain the embankment at either end of the E side of the bridge. Their stonework is as the buttress and all are coped with dressed sandstone blocks chamfered along their top edges. The SE wing wall makes a right-angle turn at its bottom end and continues down the slope as an embankment retaining wall. It continues across the stream at the bottom of the slope before terminating a short distance up the other side. The high earthen embankment continues eastwards to where the railway crosses the deepest part of the glen as a five-arch viaduct (HB23/15/022). Setting The bridge spans Crawfordsburn Glen in a wooded area of the Country Park. Just in front of where the bridge crosses the stream is a masonry culvert which conveys the stream under the embankment for a distance of c.70 metres. It is of random rubble masonry construction, with a semicircular arch, the voussoirs of which are rusticated and margined. It is similarly detailed on its downstream and upstream faces where it emerges from under the bank.