Bridge, Banada, Co. Sligo

The Down Survey, conducted between 1655 and 1656 under the direction of William Petty, was a systematic effort to map forfeited Irish lands following the Cromwellian conquest, and it recorded the landscape in remarkable detail for its time. The fact that a bridge at this location was considered worth marking suggests it was already a fixture of some consequence in the mid-seventeenth century.

The bridge sits in the immediate vicinity of Banada Abbey, an Augustinian friary on the western bank of the River Moy. The abbey's presence would have made a crossing point here practically essential, providing access for the local community and for travellers moving through this part of County Sligo. Whether the current structure occupies precisely the same footprint as the one recorded by Petty's surveyors is difficult to say with certainty, but the continuity of the location across nearly four centuries of use is itself a kind of record. A bridge that earns a place on a seventeenth-century survey map has clearly been doing something right for a very long time.