Bridge, Derryreag, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Bridges & Crossings
In the Kerry townland of Derryreag, a old road bridge crosses the Silhernane stream and goes nowhere in particular any more.
The road it once carried has long since fallen out of use, and the structure itself has been swallowed by vegetation to the point where reaching it is genuinely difficult. It is the kind of place that tends to slip entirely from local memory, present on the landscape but effectively invisible.
The bridge spans 7.6 metres along a northwest to southeast axis and is built around a single segmental arch, meaning the arch forms a shallow curve rather than a full semicircle, a common choice for road bridges where the load needed to be distributed efficiently over a modest watercourse. The arch is constructed with cut-stone voussoirs, the wedge-shaped blocks that lock together under compression to hold the span without mortar doing the heavy lifting. Of the two original parapets, only the northwest one remains, built in random rubble, which refers to stonework laid without courses or regular sizing, and finished along the top with a concrete coping that was almost certainly added at some point after the original construction. That concrete detail is a small clue that the bridge saw at least some maintenance or modification into the twentieth century before finally being abandoned.
Accessing the site is described as difficult owing to heavy overgrowth, so anyone curious enough to seek it out should be prepared for a push through dense vegetation with no guarantee of a clear view of the arch once they arrive.