Bridge at 94 Church Street, Dromore, BT25 1AA

Bridge at 94 Church Street, Dromore

This is a tall single-arch railway bridge built in 1861–62 to carry the Banbridge, Lisburn and Belfast Railway line over a driveway that formerly led to the Bishop of Dromore's palace. It was designed by Thomas Jackson, one of Victorian Ireland's foremost architects, and is situated approximately 100 metres north of Church Street and 300 metres west of Dromore town centre, immediately east of the former Dromore railway station.

The bridge features a semi-circular arch flanked by splayed walls that retain the embankment. The walls are constructed in squared, rock-faced Greywacke stone with granite dressings to the parapets. At the base of the arch on the south side are recent concrete block piers, probably once supporting a gate. A metal guardrail runs along the top of the bridge. Flanking the entrance to the laneway are decorative stone and brick gateposts (one now badly damaged), which appear to relate to the adjoining house. A small dwelling of late nineteenth-century date, somewhat altered in recent years, stands to the west of the entrance.

The driveway the bridge spanned has not been in use for considerable time and became defunct with the construction of the A1 dual carriageway. It is now an overgrown laneway. The Banbridge, Lisburn and Belfast Railway line closed in 1956, and the bridge has remained disused since. The contractor responsible for Dromore station was William Nimmick, who presumably worked on the bridge as well. Thomas Jackson was employed by the railway company to design all of its stations at Banbridge, Dromore, Hillsborough and Mullafernaghan.

As a well-preserved example of mid-nineteenth-century industrial heritage designed by a noted Belfast-based architect and situated close to other railway buildings by the same hand, the bridge is of significant architectural and historical merit.