December 07, 2003

What a Spectacle


I came across the on-line photographic archive of George Eastmann (of Kodak fame) recently. Among the images are a set of Irish photographs taken about 100 years ago. One of the pictures is of the Spectacle Bridge in Lisdoonvarna, which was build in 1875. I was passing through there recently so I stopped for a look.

Typically, even though there is no bridge like it anywhere else in the country, there is no signpost either at the bridge or in the town. There is a stile and gravel path that leads down to the Aille river, but the view is now obscured by hazel trees.



There is a very good account of the building of the bridge in Mary Mulvihill's book "Ingenious Ireland" - the reason for the unusual shape was an ingenious way of building a bridge light enougn to support itself for the 25 metre height needed to span the river gorge. Mary also had an article in the Irish Times Review section on Saturday - she was reviewing a new book called Ireland 's Bridges - the Spectacle bridge gets an honourable mention as does the clapper bridge in Mayo (two pics here and here)


P.S. Some nice pictures from a National Geographic contributor here

Posted by Monasette at December 7, 2003 11:13 PM
Comments

It's a great pity that there is a poorly-executed repair on the stonework of one of the parapet walls, it is clearly visible as a patch of rough rubble in your picture. Obviously whoever carried it out didn't care enough about the integrity of this special bridge to put a specialist craftsman stone cutter and mason on it.
Also, all of the joints of the stonework were crudely pointed with raised-strap concrete pointing in the last few years - inappropriate in a cut-stone mortared structure. In doing this work, some stones in the circular eye were damaged - some conservation job...?

JC

Posted by: john considine at June 4, 2004 11:45 PM

John,
The art of pointing walls seems to be completely lost in Ireland - whether it be modern building work or restoration.

I've seen some fairly brutal repair work on even earlier structures - mass concrete repairs to old stone buildings, etc.

Posted by: John at June 13, 2004 09:04 PM