Bridge and steps, Harbour Road, Carnlough, Ballymena, Co Antrim

Bridge and Steps, Harbour Road, Carnlough

A segmental arched masonry bridge over the main roadway, originally carrying a railway but now serving as a pedestrian way. The structure incorporates a smaller segmental archway spanning the pavement at one end and a rectangular tower with an attached flight of exterior steps at the other end.

The bridge is built of snecked white limestone rubble with shaped voussoirs to the smaller pedestrian archway. Later cement render covers the extrados to each face of the main arch. A projecting platband runs at carriageway level across the main arch and continues into the abutments, which are broken forward to form piers projecting above parapet level and topped with oversailing and blocking courses. Modern steel railings are mounted on the parapets and run across the top of the piers. The carriageway is flat; the vaults are of square limestone rubble.

The outer face of the southern parapet features a recessed stone commemorative plaque with a moulded stone surround. The plaque bears the inscription: "Carnlough Railway and Harbour. Projected and commenced by Charles Stewart Vane, Marquis of Londonderry 1853. Finished by Frances Anne Vane, Marchioness of Londonderry 1854".

The smaller pedestrian archway on the west side spans between the western abutment pier and the main abutment, which breaks forward slightly on the south side to form an end pier rising only to parapet level without projecting above it.

At the east end on the south side stands a rectangular tower with segmental gables, rising to parapet height. It is built of limestone rubble with red brick block quoins to the south-west corner. Similar brick dressings appear around a rectangular doorway and rectangular window in the narrow front elevation facing west, with a plain brick surround to an ocular opening above the doorway. The doorway contains a pair of rectangular timber tongued and grooved sheeted doors. The window is blocked on the inside and the ocular opening closed on the outside by a circular wooden panel. The roof is covered with corrugated iron sheeting and coved.

The long south wall is blank, with a flight of concrete exterior steps built against it and contained by a limestone rubble wall surmounted by modern steel railings rising to a brick block-dressed limestone rubble pier. The steps continue to carriageway level through a modern steel gate at the top landing. The east gable of the tower at the top landing contains a rectangular doorway now closed with a plywood panel, with barbed wire covering the top of the gable. The balustrade wall of the exterior steps continues to the east as a retaining wall for the former railway embankment. The retaining wall of the embankment on the north side at the east end is of better quality limestone rubble and is also surmounted by modern steel railings.

The bridge stands in the main street built between the gables of an adjoining terrace house on the south side at the west end and the former town hall at the north side, with the town hall tower also built against the bridge and rising above it. The carriageway, now with the original railway tracks removed and replaced by a pedestrian path, continues to the east to an elevated grassed area above the harbour, marked by a set of modern steel gates, and continues to the west over another similar but simpler former railway bridge spanning High Street. At the base of the bridge in Harbour Road on the south side, a telephone kiosk stands adjacent to the abutment pier at the west end, and a free-standing limestone rubble pier stands on the pavement at the bottom of the steps at the east end.