Road-over-railway Bridge, Moira Road, Lisburn, Co Antrim, BT28

Road-over-Railway Bridge, Moira Road, Lisburn

This two-arch bridge was constructed in the early 1860s to carry the Lisburn-Moira road over the former Lisburn-Castlewellan railway. It demonstrates the early use of brick in bridge construction during the mid-nineteenth century and is of local historical interest as a reminder of this former branch railway line.

The bridge is constructed mainly of quarried random rubble basalt. The abutments, pier, spandrels, parapets and wing walls are all of this material. The quoins of the abutments and piers, together with the ends of the wing walls and parapets, are finished with rusticated and margined basalt blocks. Both arches are of segmental profile and set slightly skewly to the abutments. Their soffits are of purple brick laid orthogonally, with three soldier courses forming the voussoirs. Rusticated sandstone platbands run through each arch at spring level. A rusticated sandstone string course runs along the base of each parapet and around the ends of the latter's out-projecting terminal piers. The wing walls are coped with rusticated sandstone blocks, though the copings are partly missing on both wings on the north side. The parapets are coped with dressed sandstone blocks featuring rusticated edges. The approaches to the bridge are ramped. The slightly curved deck carries two lanes of traffic and a footpath.

The bridge lies on the Knockmore Junction – Banbridge section of the Lisburn-Castlewellan railway, which was opened by the Banbridge, Lisburn & Belfast Railway in July 1863. Upon completion, the line was worked by the Ulster Railway and was amalgamated into the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) in 1876. Thomas Jackson, the Banbridge, Lisburn & Belfast Railway's consultant engineer, designed stations at Hillsborough and Dromore and was probably also responsible for this bridge. The line eventually reached Castlewellan in 1906 under the auspices of the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) and was linked to Newcastle by the Belfast & Co Down Railway in the same year. Although the bridge was designed with two tracks in mind, with one running through each arch, only one was ever laid. The Banbridge – Castlewellan section was closed in 1955, and the remainder of the line the following year.

The bridge now stands adjacent to a large industrial plant. Modern timber partitions cut across each arch to separate the properties at either end of the bridge. No traces of the railway line survive on either side; the ground has been levelled for factory storage purposes.