Weir, Borheenduff, Co. Tipperary

What looks today like a natural pond or overgrown wetland is in fact the ghost of a river bend, the old curve of the Clodiagh cut off when the channel was straightened at some point and left to quietly silt up and go green. Somewhere within or near that abandoned meander, an eel weir once stood. There is nothing to see of it now.

The weir is recorded in the Civil Survey, a mid-seventeenth-century land inquisition carried out in the aftermath of the Cromwellian wars, which catalogued property and resources across much of Ireland. The relevant entry, cited in Robert Simington's 1934 edition of the survey, notes the presence of an eel weir at this location on the Clodiagh. Eel weirs were common features of Irish rivers for centuries, typically constructed from stone, timber, or woven basketwork to channel fish into traps as they moved along the current. They were valued assets, appearing regularly in medieval and early modern property records alongside mills and fisheries. Whatever form this particular structure took, it has left no trace above ground. The straightening of the Clodiagh, which separated the old bend from the main channel entirely, would have made any weir at that point functionally useless, and the site has reverted to something that gives no obvious sign of its former purpose.