The White Bridge, Lissan House Demesne, Drumgrass Road, Cookstown, BT80 9SW

The White Bridge is a four-arched masonry bridge built in the mid-18th century, designed by Davis Ducart, a leading architect of the period in Ireland. The bridge carries a driveway across the Lissan Water river to Lissan House and represents a comparatively rare work in Northern Ireland by an important architect whose best-known buildings are in the Republic of Ireland.

The structure is built of rubble stonework with cut-stone voussoirs to graded segmental arches. The projecting abutment piers are of battered form with set-backs, terminating in tapering cut-stone pedestal piers with moulded cornicing. These elegant pedestal piers at the ends of the parapets are a characteristic embellishment of the bridge's simple but refined masonry form. A projecting cut-stone stringcourse at carriageway level forms the base for balustrading, which was originally of Chinese-inspired fretwork pattern but has since been replaced with crude timber balustrading of simplified design. At least one of the arches has undergone later repair with brick arching and vault insertion.

The bridge stands within the densely wooded demesne of Lissan House. From the bridge itself there remains an unobstructed view of the east end of Lissan House. The setting includes cascades built in association with the bridge at the same time; the curved wall of the cascade structure still survives a short distance downstream, though now largely hidden by overgrowth. Dense vegetation and overgrowth to the riverbanks on each side increasingly obscures views of the bridge itself.

The precise date of construction is not known, but the bridge appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1833. In 1837, Lewis recorded it as having been built by "the celebrated Ducart" in connection with an artificial sheet of water and cascades at Lissan. It is supposed that Ducart was commissioned by John Staples, who succeeded to the estate in 1762. The bridge forms part of an interesting and valuable group of structures within the demesne and is of considerable interest due to both its authorship by an important architect and its association with the development of Lissan House.