Bridge, Inchmore, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Bridges & Crossings
A narrow stone bridge crossing the River Nore at Inchmore is only fourteen metres long and two metres wide, but its modest dimensions disguise what was once a carefully integrated piece of defensive planning.
Rather than simply providing a river crossing, it was directly linked by a walled passage to the main gateway in the east wall of a bawn, the enclosed fortified courtyard that typically surrounded an Irish tower house or fortified residence. That connection turned the bridge into something closer to a controlled threshold, a point at which movement across the river was filtered through the fortification itself.
The bridge sits roughly forty metres east of the associated castle, house, and bawn complex at Inchmore. Its two flattened pointed arches and a central pier, buttressed on both sides to resist the push of the current, suggest solid and considered construction. The stone revetment lining the riverbank for several metres on either side further reinforces the sense of a deliberate engineering effort rather than a simple utilitarian crossing. Notably, the masonry style closely resembles that found in the bawn walls nearby, which raises the possibility that bridge and bawn were built as part of the same programme of works, designed together to form a coherent defended approach to the house.