Ivy Bridge, Tollymore Park, Newcastle, Co Down

Ivy Bridge is a single-span vehicle bridge built in 1780, spanning the Shimna River as it flows through Tollymore Forest Park. It is situated on the eastern side of the park and was constructed for James Hamilton, the 2nd Earl of Clanbrassil. Like most of the decorative structures added to the Tollymore Park estate during this period, it was probably influenced by the designs of Thomas Wright of Durham, an English architect and friend of both James Hamilton and his father, the 1st Earl of Clanbrassil. The bridge is recorded on the 1834 Ordnance Survey map under its current name. The origin of the name, beyond a possible reference to the plant, is uncertain.

The bridge is built of rubble stonework and carries a single pointed arch, with rough stone voussoirs. The parapets are likewise in fieldstone rubble, with coping formed mainly from large flat stones and a wide outward splay at each end. Set into the centre of the western parapet is a granite dressed panel bearing the letter 'C' surmounted by a coronet — the monogram of the 2nd Earl of Clanbrassil, James Hamilton — with a corresponding dressed panel on the opposite parapet carrying the date '1780'. At each end of each parapet, but standing free from it, is a small square turret with a castellated parapet and a pyramidal spire. The main body of each turret is finished in roughcast render, and each face carries a pointed arch recess with granite dressings to the arch head. Most of these recesses are window-sized, but those facing toward the river are tall enough for a person to shelter within. The castellated parapets are in stone, with the spires finished in V-jointed ashlar granite. The drive surface over the bridge is covered in fine gravel. It is suspected that the roughcast render to the turret faces may have been applied in fairly recent times and that the turrets were originally harled.

The bridge sits within a landscape of considerable historic depth. In late medieval times, Tollymore and the surrounding townlands were held by the Magennis family of Upper Iveagh. In 1611, Brian MacHugh Magennis received royal confirmation of his ownership when King James I granted him seven and a half townlands, including the land that now forms the park. Tollymore remained in Magennis hands until around 1685, when Bernard Magennis died childless and the estate passed to his sister Ellen. Ellen was married to William Hamilton, and on her death the inheritance passed to their son James. His son, also called James, who inherited in 1701, was created Viscount Limerick in 1719 and Earl of Clanbrassil — of the second creation — in 1728. This James, popularly remembered by his earlier title of Lord Limerick, began developing Tollymore as a naturalistic landscape demesne around 1720. He enclosed much of the land as a deer park, began large-scale tree planting, built a hunting lodge and the 'Old Bridge', and rebuilt the parish church at Bryansford, the small estate village to the north of the park, which takes its name from his ancestor Brian Magennis. Around 1750, Lord Limerick began construction of a larger house, likely taking design advice from Thomas Wright, who had visited Ireland in 1746–47 and stayed at 'Tullymoor Park' in September 1746. The traveller Dr Pococke, writing in his Tour of Ireland of 1752, noted that Lord Limerick had by then completed two rooms of his new 'pretty lodge' and had built 'a thatch'd open place to dine in' on the south side of the Shimna River. The Clanbrassil Barn was added just north of the house in 1757, and the Horn Bridge was built to the south around the same time. Lord Limerick died in 1758 and was succeeded by his son, also named James, who extended the new house and continued his father's planting programme.

It was this second James — the 2nd Earl of Clanbrassil — who, in the 1780s, erected the Barbican gate at the eastern entrance to the park, the gothick gate at the Bryansford entrance, the hermitage, the gothick follies and steward's lodge on the Hilltown Road, and a number of bridges within the park including Ivy Bridge, Parnell's Bridge, and Foley's Bridge, the last named after his wife, Grace Foley. These additions, which also appear to have been influenced by Thomas Wright, together with the planting, made Tollymore one of the most admired estates in Ireland. Bernard Scalé's 1777 map of the park conveys the picturesque quality of the landscape at this period, showing a rolling terrain of planting, meadows, rivers, streams, and woodland walks. An advertisement in the Belfast News-Letter of 26 April 1785, offering lodgings in Bryansford village, made much of the 'most pleasing prospect of the Right Hon. Earl of Clanbrassil's much admired demesne, which is beautiful to the sight and extensive to the bounds', and praised the wholesome air and 'herbage on which the goats feed', noting that it was 'much frequented by ladies and gentlemen for the recovery of lost health'. The 2nd Earl died without issue in 1798, and the park passed to his sister Anne, wife of Robert Jocelyn, 1st Earl of Roden.

Their son, Robert, 2nd Earl of Roden, inherited in 1802 and built the Bryansford and Barbican gate lodges, the latter now demolished. He also erected an obelisk monument east of the house in memory of his second son James, who died prematurely in 1812. The 2nd Earl and his successor, the 3rd Earl, continued to develop Bryansford village, providing a Roman Catholic church in 1820, school houses in 1823 and 1826, labourers' dwellings, and the large dower house known as 'The Nest'. The 3rd Earl also constructed a water-powered saw mill within the demesne and in 1865 added a small lodge to the east. He enlarged Tollymore House by adding an extra storey to the wings and a tall French chateau-style roof to the original central block, an addition regarded as somewhat incongruous. Tollymore Park remained in Roden ownership until 1930, when the 8th Earl sold two thirds of the land to the Ministry of Agriculture for afforestation. The remaining third was purchased by the Ministry in 1940, and during the Second World War Tollymore House and part of the grounds were used by the Army. After the war the house fell into disrepair and was demolished by Lord Roden in 1952. In 1955 Tollymore became the first state forest in Northern Ireland to be designated a Forest Park and was opened to the public. Though the house itself has gone, most of the park's 18th- and early 19th-century gates, bridges, and lodges have survived, and the park has continued to be developed for timber production, recreation, conservation, and education.