Quay, Carrigafreaghane, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Transport Infrastructure
On the eastern shore of Castlelough Bay, a stretch of Lough Leane in County Kerry, a small pier extends quietly into the water and goes almost entirely unnoticed.
It is not ruined in any dramatic sense; it simply stopped being used. Two courses of large, irregular sandstone blocks remain, the surface still roughly paved, the long axis running northwest to southeast. At around twenty metres long and two and a half metres wide, it is modest by any measure, but its presence raises the obvious question: what, exactly, was this for?
Lough Leane is the largest of the Killarney lakes, and its shores supported considerable local activity for centuries, from fishing communities to the movement of goods by water in an era when the surrounding landscape made overland travel difficult. A small stream enters the lake immediately to the south of the pier, which may have made this a convenient landing point. The structure is built from sandstone, the dominant local stone, shaped without great precision into the irregular blocks that characterise vernacular waterside construction across Kerry. No specific date of construction is recorded, and no builder or owner is documented, but the form and materials are consistent with the kind of working quay that would have served a townland's everyday needs rather than any grand commercial purpose. The place-name element in Carrigafreaghane suggests a rocky feature in the landscape, which fits the character of this low, functional structure sitting at the water's edge.