Sugar Island Bridge, Newry, Co Down, BT34

Sugar Island Bridge, Newry

This bridge spans the Newry River and links the town centre with the main Armagh road. Built between 1800 and 1819, it is the oldest surviving bridge in Newry Town. Its plain style and basic construction contrasts with the more elaborate bridges of the mid and later 19th century, such as Ballybot Bridge and Armaghdown Bridge.

The structure is constructed throughout of random granite and Silurian rubble, including the soffits. It comprises four equal-sized segmental arches with voussoirs of dressed granite featuring slightly protruding keyblocks. Triangular cutwaters in finely dressed granite are positioned on both the upstream and downstream sides, terminating at arch spring level. The string courses and parapet copings are also of finely dressed granite. Markings on the parapets indicate the former presence of a lamp standard at each end, both now removed. A pipe is carried across the outside face of the upstream parapet.

Part of a fifth arch is visible on the left of the upstream side, though the remainder of this arch and its entire downstream face are now hidden by road widening. This arch originally carried a headrace under the bridge to a former corn mill in Mill Street. Although the race is now infilled, the arch appears to remain open to facilitate the discharge of floodwater. An arched culvert is let into the walled riverbank immediately above and below the bridge to allow floodwater to pass through this arch.

The site was originally crossed by a wooden footbridge erected in the early 1700s. This was subsequently replaced with a 10-arch masonry structure known as Mudda Murphy's bridge, named after the erector of the earlier bridge, which is depicted on Rocque's 1760 map of County Armagh. By the early 19th century, the present five-arch bridge had replaced it. Writing in 1819, Bradshaw noted: "It is a good bridge of five arches. Formerly these were ten arches; but five of them being of no use for venting the water, it was thought unnecessary to retain them." An 1829 view of the town shows the river section comprising four spans with a smaller fifth arch over the mill race at the east end. The 1836 Ordnance Survey Memoir records: "It is built of granite, is in length 80 feet and including the parapet walls 26 feet broad." The bridge takes its name from a sugar refinery which formerly stood in the locality. It is of industrial archaeological interest and lies within a conservation area.