Bridge, Shrone, Co. Cork

Co. Cork |

Bridges & Crossings

Bridge, Shrone, Co. Cork

Near the mouth of the Glengarriff river in West Cork, a ruined hump-backed bridge survives in partial but telling form.

Only a single semi-circular arch remains, extending roughly eight metres from the southern bank, but the stonework is specific enough to reward a close look. The voussoirs, the wedge-shaped stones that form the curved underside of an arch and lock it into compression, are coarse rather than dressed, giving the structure a workmanlike character quite different from the refined cut stone of later bridge-building. Pointed breakwaters, designed to deflect the force of the current and protect the piers, run up to the full height of the bridge, a detail that suggests the river here could carry some force.

The bridge sits within a cluster of features associated with the Cromwellin area, a grouping that includes a nearby road crossing bridge and a route known locally as Cromwell's Road. The name points to the mid-seventeenth century, when Cromwellian forces moved through Munster during the conquest of Ireland, and military necessity drove the construction or improvement of roads and river crossings across the province. Whether this particular bridge was built by or for those forces, or simply acquired the association over time, the local landscape retains the imprint of that period in several connected features, each one a fragment of what was once a functioning route through difficult terrain. The bridge's width of just over three and a half metres is consistent with a road capable of taking wheeled traffic, modest but purposeful.

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Pete F
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