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

Glenshesk Bridge is a mid-19th-century masonry skew-arch road bridge spanning the Glenshesk River in a deep rocky gorge on the road between Armoy and Ballycastle. Built between 1844 and 1846, it was designed by Charles Lanyon, then County Surveyor, and constructed by William Bald, the contractor responsible for the Antrim Coast Road works of 1832–42. The bridge was commissioned by the County Antrim Grand Jury to carry a new road line across the valley, connecting existing routes on either side.

The bridge is constructed of quarried rubble basalt with dressed sandstone embellishment. Its most striking feature is a single semicircular arch with a keystone on each face depicting a figure in bas-relief—an unusual decorative embellishment. The structural interest is further heightened by the bridge's skew construction rather than orthogonal alignment. Projecting stones set through the arch at spring level once supported falsework during construction and remain visible; the arch soffit has since been gunited, which obscures its original structural form.

Flanking the abutments are rectangular buttresses with dressed sandstone details, which continue upward as out-projecting terminal piers to the parapets. A dressed sandstone string course runs across each face above the arch crown and around the buttresses, continuing as coping around the curved wing walls. The parapets are topped with oversailing, slightly sloping sandstone blocks, whilst the terminal piers bear shallow sandstone caps set slightly higher than the parapets themselves. Set into the road face of each parapet are three vertical sandstone blocks; the middle stone on the upstream parapet once bore a date stone (now illegible), whilst its counterpart on the downstream parapet is marked with a crow's foot bench mark. According to the 1972 First Survey record card, the upstream stone originally read "Planted in 1846".

The bridge remains largely unaltered in its fabric, though recent guniting of the arch soffit has obscured some of its original construction detail. Spanning a deep, wooded gorge with open fields beyond, the bridge's dramatic setting and the scale of its single soaring arch distinguish it from other mid-19th-century bridges of comparable quality. Since its opening, it has facilitated social and economic interactions between the communities on either side and remains of considerable local importance.