Railway Bridge over Glen River, Upper Dunmurry Lane, Dunmurry, Lisburn, Co Antrim

Railway Bridge over Glen River

This early nineteenth-century railway bridge carries the main Belfast-Dublin line over the Glen River, situated a short distance south-east of Dunmurry Station. The bridge demonstrates the Ulster Railway Company's commitment to engineering excellence and public image through its high quality construction and impressive design.

The bridge is built primarily of ashlar Triassic sandstone, sourced from the Moira and Magheralin district. It features a semicircular brick arch with cut stone voussoirs that have curved outer edges. The arch is set skewly to the railway line—not at right angles—yet the bricks are laid orthogonally, with their bedding joints parallel to the spring line. The brick soffit is slightly instepped from the sandstone abutments. Tapered buttresses flank each side of the arch. Above the arch crown sits a shallow platband, followed by a projecting string course that continues around the tops of the buttresses. Above the string course rises a sandstone-coped parapet terminating in advanced rectangular piers, also capped with sandstone. At the upstream left-bank end, a curved wing wall of squared rubble blackstone retains the high embankment.

The railway between Belfast and Lisburn opened in 1839 under the Ulster Railway Company, representing both the first railway in Ulster and the second in Ireland, after the Dublin-Kingstown line of 1834. The line was constructed by William Dargan (known as the 'father' of Irish railways) under the direction of John Godwin, later Professor of Engineering at Queen's College, Belfast. The consultants were William Bald, builder of the Antrim Coast Road, and Thomas Jackson Woodhouse, County Antrim's first County Surveyor. Originally laid as single track at 6 feet 2 inches gauge, the line was converted to two tracks at the new standard gauge of 5 feet 3 inches in 1846. The bridge design accommodated this future doubling, with all bridges along the line constructed to allow for expanded depth. This arched brick and stone bridge is an original feature of the line; no evidence exists of any previous timber or metal girder span at this location.

In 1876, the Ulster Railway Company merged with other railway enterprises to form the Great Northern Railway Company (Ireland). The Ulster Transport Authority assumed operations in 1958, followed by the Northern Ireland Railway Company in 1968. Translink now operates the line. The bridge is of considerable historical interest as one of Ulster's earliest rail-over-river bridges and holds group value with other railway bridges along the same line.