Bridge, Clogherane, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Bridges & Crossings
There is a particular kind of rural Irish bridge that does its job so quietly it almost disappears into the landscape.
The road bridge at Clogherane in County Kerry is one such structure. Crossing the Ahadav River along a northwest to southeast axis, it measures 6.2 metres wide and carries its road over the water on a single semicircular arch spanning 3 metres, a form that concentrates the load through wedge-shaped stones known as voussoirs, here left large and only roughly dressed, giving the whole thing a workmanlike solidity rather than any pretence at elegance.
Built sometime in the mid to late nineteenth century, the bridge is constructed from random rubble, meaning stones of varying sizes laid without regular coursing, though worked enough to sit together with reasonable stability. This was the ordinary vocabulary of rural construction in the period, utilitarian and local, relying on the skill of the mason to make do with whatever the surrounding land offered. Such bridges multiplied across Ireland during and after the Famine era, as road improvement schemes pushed routes into areas that had previously been poorly served, and the Ahadav crossing at Clogherane fits neatly into that broader pattern of nineteenth-century infrastructure quietly stitching together remote parts of Kerry.