Drehidanookera Bridge, Bunscanniff, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Bridges & Crossings
The Irish name for this single-arch stone bridge, Droichead an Úcaire, translates as the fuller's bridge, a detail that quietly roots it in the working landscape of Connemara.
A fuller was a craftsman who cleaned and thickened woven cloth by beating and washing it, often using a nearby water source, and the name suggests this crossing once served a small industrial purpose that has long since faded from memory.
The bridge sits on the pre-Nimmo road to Ballynahinch, meaning it predates the network of roads engineered across Connemara in the early nineteenth century by Alexander Nimmo, the Scottish engineer commissioned to open up the west of Ireland. Nimmo's roads, built largely in the 1820s, rationalised and in many cases replaced older routes; this bridge represents one of those earlier alignments, the road it served rendered obsolete once the new infrastructure arrived. As of 1986, when surveyor T. Robinson noted its condition, the bridge remained largely intact, with the exception of its parapet, the low protective wall running along the bridge's sides, which had suffered some damage.