Survey Data
Reg No
40401801
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Technical
Original Use
Bridge
In Use As
Bridge
Date
1740 - 1780
Coordinates
268564, 310791
Date Recorded
03/08/2012
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Triple-arch road bridge over Knappagh River, built c.1760. Elliptical arches with roughly cut voussoirs and large capped cutwaters on upriver and downriver elevations rising to height of arch apexes. Piers and breakwaters on high plinth course. Parapet coping of rock-faced blocks over roughly coursed rubble limestone parapet and spandrels. Rendered copings to wing walls. Large buttress responds to wings.
Appraisal
A well-composed and constructed masonry road bridge, spanning the border the Cavan-Monaghan border, having elliptical headed arches and large cutwaters typical of eighteenth-century bridges. It is enlivened by the contrast between the rubble limestone walling, carefully shaped cutwaters, and the robust coping of rusticated rock-faced stone, added in the later nineteenth century and typical of bridges of that period. The bridge provides insight into the expansion of the Irish road network during the eighteenth century under the Grand Jury system, and the techniques used in bridge construction in this period.