Bridge, Clogherane, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Bridges & Crossings
Small bridges tend to escape notice precisely because they do their job so quietly.
The road bridge at Clogherane, spanning a minor river just before it empties into Glanmore Lake in County Kerry, is one such structure. What makes it worth a second look is not its scale but its construction: a single segmental arch with a span of just 1.75 metres, the whole thing set within a vertical-faced recess that runs the full height of the bridge. That recess is an unusual detail, giving the structure a slightly formal, deliberate quality that sits oddly against the roughness of the stonework around it.
Built sometime in the mid to late nineteenth century, the bridge is constructed from roughly dressed random rubble, the kind of practical, locally sourced masonry common to rural Kerry at the time. The voussoirs, the wedge-shaped stones that form and lock the arch, are large and only roughly dressed, which gives the arch a slightly raw, unfinished appearance despite the evident care of its overall design. The abutments have a base batter, meaning they widen slightly as they meet the ground, a technique that adds stability and helps distribute the load into the riverbanks. At 6.1 metres wide, the bridge was clearly built to accommodate a working road rather than a footpath, suggesting it served real agricultural or commercial traffic in this corner of the Beara Peninsula.