Road bridge over railway adjacent to 63 Kilmonaghan Road Newry Co. Down BT35 6QD

Road bridge over railway, Kilmonaghan Road, approximately 5 miles north of Newry, County Down

This is an industrial-style metal road bridge with a timber-planked deck, carried on stone piers over the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway line on Kilmonaghan Road. The steel elements of the bridge bear the maker's mark of Port Talbot Steel Co Ltd, which dates them to between 1906 and 1928, the years during which that company was active. The bridge spans west to east from the south side of No. 63 Kilmonaghan Road across the railway tracks to No. 72 Kilmonaghan Road. It is no longer in use as a public road bridge but serves as access to a farm dwelling and its land.

The bridge replaces an earlier structure on the same site. The original bridge was most likely first built in 1850 or 1851, when the railway line was being driven south from Portadown to Goraghwood, and the stone piers are a probable remnant of that earliest bridge. The original structure was built of wood — it is captioned as 'Wooden Br.' on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861 — and it is possible that the present steel structure replicates an original wooden lattice design. The bridge provides access to a house on the east side of the railway that was constructed between 1835 and 1861.

The parapets consist of overlapping painted steel diagonal members forming latticework, secured at their junctions by painted steel rivets. The horizontal members are embossed with the name 'GLASGOW STEEL', together with a crown motif at the centre. This identifies these upper elements as products of the Glasgow Iron and Steel Company of Wishaw, which used the crown motif on its brands from at least the 1890s. The company was established in 1844 as the Glasgow Iron Company, became incorporated as the Glasgow Iron and Steel Company in 1888, and continued manufacturing steel until at least the 1950s. Some horizontal members are additionally embossed with 'Port Talbot Steel Ltd'. Vertical steel fins run along the outer side of the balustrade. A metal safety grille is attached to the inside of the balustrading. Beneath the timber planking, steel I-section beams run transversely across the span. Timber sleepers are laid along the length of the span, forming a raised edge between the planking and the balustrading. The timber deck itself is a replacement.

At the west entrance to the bridge on Kilmonaghan Road, the north side is defined by rock-faced coursed stone walling with a concrete coping. Adjacent to the balustrading here stands a square-plan stone pier of the same stonework, with a large cut-stone cap with rounded ends and a sloped top. The south side of the entrance has a small section of dry-stone walling and an identical stone pier. The tall coursed cut-stone piers supporting the vertical steel fins beneath the deck were observed during a survey in 2015, though the underside of the bridge was not accessible at the time of the principal inspection.

The bridge was built as part of the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway, incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1845 to construct a line between Drogheda and Portadown, connecting the existing Dublin and Drogheda Railway with the Ulster Railway and thereby linking Dublin with Belfast. Work on the line commenced at Drogheda and had reached Killeen, to the south of Newry, by July 1850. A line was simultaneously driven south from Portadown to Goraghwood between 1850 and 1851. The contractor for the Portadown to Goraghwood section — the sixth of six separate contracts into which the line was divided — was William Dargan, a noted railway contractor and entrepreneur involved in a large number of Irish railway projects. The section of railway between Mullaghglass (south of Goraghwood) and Portadown opened to the public on 6th January 1852. The full line from Drogheda to Portadown did not open until June 1852, following completion of the Craigmore Viaduct, and the first passenger train crossed the Boyne Viaduct in June 1853, completing the through route between Dublin and Belfast. The Boyne Viaduct had initially opened with a temporary structure carrying trains; the permanent structure was completed in April 1855.

The engineer-in-chief employed by the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway was Sir John Macneill (born in County Louth), a former pupil of Thomas Telford who worked in England and Scotland until the late 1830s, when he was recruited by the Irish Railway Commissioners to survey and lay out the railway system in the north of Ireland. He subsequently served as chief engineer to numerous Irish railways and received a knighthood for his work on the Dublin to Drogheda line. In the north, he was engineer to the Dundalk and Enniskillen Railway, the Belfast and County Down Railway, the Downpatrick, Dundrum and Newcastle Railway, and the Belfast Central Railway. He was Professor of Civil Engineering at Trinity College, Dublin from 1842 to 1852. Among his notable works, Macneill designed a bridge over the Royal Canal that was the first iron lattice bridge in Britain and Ireland, and was responsible for numerous railway bridges and viaducts, including several timber viaducts with masonry abutments for the Dublin and Drogheda Railway. He also designed the Craigmore Viaduct, the Egyptian Arch, and the Boyne Viaduct as part of the Dublin and Belfast Junction works. The present bridge, though on a much smaller scale and arched rather than flat, bears some aesthetic similarities to parts of the Boyne Viaduct — particularly in its original design as recorded in drawings held in the Irish Railway Record Society archive — with its series of tall, narrow stone piers spanned by a deck and parapets with diagonal trusses.

The resident engineer for the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway was James Barton, who had been a student of Macneill's at Trinity College. Barton made important contributions to the design of the Boyne Viaduct and later became a consultant to numerous railway companies, mostly in the north of Ireland; his obituary described him as 'one of the pioneers of Irish Railway construction and development'.

In August 1850, Macneill reported to the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway Company on progress with the 16 miles of line from Goraghwood to Portadown under contract to Dargan: 'The bridges are in a forward state; five of them are very nearly completed with the exception of the parapet, and three others are far advanced.' By August 1851, Macneill reported that all bridges between Craigmore and Portadown, except one over the Cusher River, had been completed. The Dublin and Belfast Junction Company was under some pressure to maintain access for those cut off from the main roads by the new railway. In 1852, the company was sued by a woman named Collins, who lived in a thatched dwelling near Newry and complained that she had been 'deprived of the old road to Newry' by the construction of the line.

The steel maker's mark 'Port Talbot Steel Co Ltd' identifies those elements as products of a company incorporated in 1906 (as recorded in the Glamorgan Archives). The company passed to Baldwins Ltd in 1916 but continued to trade under its former name until November 1928, when it went into voluntary liquidation, as reported in the Liverpool Journal of Commerce.

The bridge is set in a rural location, with the west end of the span immediately south of No. 63 Kilmonaghan Road. The east end leads to farmland, with views over the surrounding countryside. The listing extends to the bridge as a whole, including the walling, the stone piers at each end, and the stone piers beneath the deck. Materials are painted metal, replacement timber planking, and stone walling and piers.

The bridge retains much of its original historic fabric and appears to be the only bridge of this era with this type of construction in the Newry and Mourne area.