Bridge, Roganstown, Co. Dublin

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Bridges & Crossings

Bridge, Roganstown, Co. Dublin

One of the five arches on this old crossing of the Broadmeadow river carries no water at all.

The southernmost arch is a dry span, built to accommodate a stream that once ran alongside the main river channel. That stream is long gone, and the arch now frames a footpath running through Roganstown Golf Course, giving the structure an quietly odd quality: a bridge that outlasted the very thing it was built to bridge.

The crossing dates to the sixteenth or seventeenth century, according to O'Keeffe and Simington's survey of Irish stone bridges, and it sits on what was once the main overland route northward to Drogheda. It appears on Moll's map of 1714, by which point it was already an established feature of the landscape. The four working arches are segmental, meaning they describe a shallow curve rather than a full semicircle, built from roughly cut stone in the manner typical of early modern Irish bridge construction. The triangular cutwater projections on the upstream face, which deflect the current away from the piers, are a later addition and are built in ashlar, that is, finely dressed and precisely laid stonework, which sets them apart visually from the rougher original fabric. The bridge did not escape the twentieth century unaltered: the riverbed beneath the arches was paved with concrete, and the lower portions of the piers were encased in concrete, most likely during the 1950s under works carried out by the local authority.

The bridge carries the local road designated L6 and is accessible from that route. Because it now borders the golf course, some of the surrounding context requires a little navigation to appreciate fully, and the dry southern arch is most clearly seen from the course side. The concrete encasing on the lower piers is immediately obvious on closer inspection, a reminder that even structures of this age have rarely been left entirely alone.

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