Sir Thomas Bridge, Ferryhouse, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Bridges & Crossings
Crossing the River Suir between Tipperary and Waterford, this narrow humped-back bridge carries an unusual distinction: for the better part of two centuries, a gate fixed in its middle meant that passage was a matter of permission rather than right.
Stretching 79 metres from bank to bank and barely 3.4 metres wide between its parapets, it is not a bridge built for traffic in any modern sense. It was built for control.
Local tradition attributes the structure to Sir Thomas Osborne, who died in 1713, and one source dates its construction to 1690. The Osborne family had held Kincor Castle at Tikincor, sitting roughly 170 metres to the south-east of the bridge, from the 1650s onwards, and the crossing would have served as a direct approach to that seat. A private bridge with a gate at its centre until the mid-nineteenth century, it functioned less as public infrastructure than as an extension of the estate. Originally of seven arches, one has since been lost, leaving six spans running north to south. The construction is not uniform across those spans. The most northerly arch, at the Tipperary end, is a narrow segmental-headed arch with flat, broad sandstone voussoirs, the wedge-shaped stones that form an arch. The second arch is noticeably wider, having been enlarged sometime in the mid-eighteenth or early nineteenth century, and a tow-path was inserted beneath it at the same time to allow river traffic to pass. The carved scroll keystone on either side of that altered arch suggests the earlier date is more likely for the widening. Four pointed cutwaters project from the upstream, western face of the bridge, angled to divide the river's current and reduce pressure on the piers. Those piers themselves sit low, none rising more than 1.2 metres above the river bed, and range between three and four metres in thickness. More recent interventions are visible throughout: concrete rendering on the soffits beneath the arches, machine-cut stonework in the altered spans, and concrete capping along the parapet of the northern half.