Bridge, Eyeries, Co. Cork

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Bridges & Crossings

Bridge, Eyeries, Co. Cork

On the Beara Peninsula outside Eyeries, a road bridge crosses the Kealincha river in a state of partial ruin, its hump-backed profile interrupted where the southern section has collapsed away.

What remains is the northern portion, carrying a single semicircular arch of roughly three metres in width, a form typical of pre-modern Irish bridge construction in which a rounded arch of mortared stone distributes the load of traffic and structure alike. The geometry is simple and functional, and the collapse of part of the span has turned what was once an unremarkable crossing point into something more exposed and easier to read.

Hump-backed bridges of this type were common across rural Ireland from the seventeenth century onwards, built to carry local traffic over streams and minor rivers where the arch had to rise steeply to clear the waterway beneath. The semicircular arch, as opposed to the flatter segmental form that became more common in later construction, is generally associated with earlier building practice. The surviving portion at Eyeries gives a reasonably clear picture of the original structure, even in its reduced state, the arch ring and spandrel masonry still coherent where the bridge has not given way.

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