Bridge No 6, Road Bridge over Railway, Mountjoy Avenue, Tattraconnaghty TL, Omagh, Co Tyrone, BT78 5NX

Bridge No 6, Road Bridge over Railway, Mountjoy Avenue

This single-span stone and brick road bridge was erected around 1840 to carry Mountjoy Avenue over the Londonderry & Enniskillen Railway, which later became the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) branch line running from Portadown to Derry. The railway line is now disused, though the bridge remains in active use.

The bridge is set on an east-west axis and is constructed as a single elliptical-headed arch formed in five courses of brick headers rising to a tooled impost stone, with a rendered soffit. The spandrels, piers and parapet are built in random coursed rock-faced stone ashlar. At either end of both elevations, tapering piers rise to a tooled blocking course at the base of the parapet, with both parapet and piers surmounted by rock-faced stone coping. The walling combines rock-faced stone ashlar with brick.

The bridge first appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1852, where it is captioned as crossing the Londonderry & Enniskillen Railway. By the third edition (1905–6), this had become the Great Northern Railway (Ireland). The original railway company was incorporated in 1845, with the line reaching Strabane in 1847 and Omagh in 1852. Through subsequent amalgamations and mergers—including incorporation into the Irish North Western Railway Company, the Northern Railway Company, and finally the Great Northern Railway Company (Ireland) in 1876—the line remained a significant commercial artery for the region, connecting Omagh and Strabane as major market centres. Following the closure of many uneconomic lines in the post-war period, this section fell into disuse.

Despite no longer serving the railway, the bridge remains an attractive element in the landscape and is of considerable industrial archaeological interest as part of the significant remnant of the route and the industrial heritage of the district.