Water Conduit, Rourke’s Park, Head Road, Annalong, Newry, Co Down

Water Conduit, Rourke's Park, Annalong

This water conduit carries supply from the Mournes to Belfast across a minor stream as a closed riveted sheet steel structure measuring 1.5 metres wide by 1.8 metres high. It was designed with a capacity of 620 million litres of water per day, matching the cut-and-cover sections of the conduit which have a cross-section of 1.7 metres square.

The conduit is supported on abutments set 4.1 metres apart at the top, battered outwards towards the base. The abutment walls are faced with strap-pointed dressed granite blocks laid in regular courses, with concrete coping at the top. Concrete steps cut through the abutments to provide access across the stream, with galvanised steel handrails installed along the top of the conduit in recent times. The structure occupies a demarcated area bounded by wire fencing with vertical cast-iron posts topped with the initials 'BWC' (Belfast Water Commissioners). Where the fence crosses the stream, which is pitched with stones, it is of wrought-iron chain. Wrought-iron entrance gates are positioned on two opposite sides.

The conduit formed part of the first phase of the Mourne Scheme, conceived in 1891 by Luke Macassey, consulting engineer to the Belfast City & District Water Commissioners. The Belfast Water Act of 1893 enabled this phase to commence, which involved placing intercepting weirs across the Kilkeel and Annalong Rivers to divert water into a conduit discharging into a service reservoir at Knockbreckan on Belfast's southern outskirts, approximately 35 miles from Dunnywater in the Annalong valley. The conduit was constructed by Messrs Fisher and Le Fanu and opened in 1901. When the Silent Valley reservoir opened in 1933 in the upper Kilkeel River, substantially increasing supply, no modifications to this particular trough proved necessary.

The structure is set in a secluded woodland glade and is relatively scarce in type, as most aqueducts of this form have since been replaced with piped systems. It possesses group value with a similar conduit across a minor stream in Moneydorragh More townland and is of historical significance in a regional context for its role in this major infrastructure scheme.