Bridge, Ballyquane, Co. Cork

Co. Cork |

Bridges & Crossings

Bridge, Ballyquane, Co. Cork

Most medieval bridges in Ireland that survive from before the fifteenth century share two reliable features: pointed segmental arches and a flat roadway.

The bridge at Ballyquane over the River Funshion has neither. Its thirteen semicircular arches and the pronounced hump of its roadway place it outside the standard pattern, which makes it harder to date with confidence and, for anyone with an interest in medieval engineering, considerably more interesting.

The bridge is built from random-rubble limestone, its piers set directly onto rock outcrops in the riverbed rather than on constructed foundations, a practical solution that would have suited a builder working without sophisticated equipment. The arches increase gradually in width and height towards the centre, ranging from fourteen feet to seventeen feet six inches in span, with the piers between them varying from five to seven feet six inches in width. On the upstream face, low pointed cutwaters, narrow wedge-shaped projections designed to divide the current and reduce the force of water against the piers, are still visible, though the downstream side has none. The parapet walls, built in the same rough rubble, retain the remains of a vertical stone coping along their tops. A traditional date of 1446 has long been attached to the structure, though the architectural historians O'Keeffe and Simington, writing in 1991, were unable to find any documentary evidence to support it. They concluded that a mid-fifteenth-century date was as plausible as any other, which is a careful way of saying the tradition may be roughly right even if it cannot be verified. The bridge sits below Glanworth Castle, which adds a layer of context: a crossing of this scale, in this location, would have had obvious strategic and commercial value to whoever controlled the castle above.

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