Glenshesk Bridge, Clare Mountain/, Craigban Tls, Ballycastle, Co.Antrim

A mid-19th C masonry skew-arch road bridge spanning a gorge on the Glenshesk River on the road between Armoy and Ballycastle. This substantial bridge is executed in quarried rubble basalt with dressed sandstone embellishment to its abutment quoins and arch voussoirs. The arch is of semicircular profile with a keystone on each face depicting a figure in bas-relief. A row of projecting stones through the arch at spring level supported falsework during the arch's construction; its soffit is now gunited. Adjacent to the abutments are similarly detailed rectangular buttresses which continue up as out-projecting terminal piers to the parapets. A dressed sandstone string course runs across each face above arch crown level and around the buttresses. It then continues as the coping to the bridge's curved wing walls. The parapets are coped with oversailing, slightly sloping sandstone blocks. The terminal piers have shallow sandstone caps which are slightly higher than the parapets proper. Set into the road face of each parapet are three vertical sandstone blocks. The middle one on the upstream parapet bears an indecipherable legend whilst its counterpart on the opposite parapet is incised with a crow's foot bench mark. According to the 1972 First Survey card, the upstream stone reads 'Planted in 1846'. Setting: The bridge spans the two sides of the Glenshesk Valley which here forms a deep, wooded gorge with open fields to both sides.