Gaddan Bridge, Gaddan, Co. Sligo

Most surviving stone bridges of any age were recorded in the Sites and Monuments Record of 1989 or the Record of Monuments and Places of 1995, so to find one that slipped through both nets suggests something that was simply overlooked, perhaps because it sits on a private road leading only to Gaddan House and carries little traffic beyond that.

The bridge itself is a single-arch structure of 18th or 19th-century appearance, slightly hump-backed as it crosses a narrow stream on a rough north-south alignment. Its span of around five and a half metres and a height of roughly two metres are modest but functional. What gives it a certain rough character is the construction detail visible at the base of the arch: a foundation course of large boulders, with voussoirs, the wedge-shaped stones that form the curved underside of the arch and lock it in place, cut and laid without particular refinement. There is no parapet wall, which leaves the edges of the six-metre-wide roadway open on both sides, an arrangement that was not uncommon on working estate or farm bridges where ornament was beside the point and economy was not.