County: Kilkenny Site name: KILKENNY: Unnamed Bridge, River Breagagh
Sites and Monuments Record No.: RMP 19:26 Licence number: 00E0406
Author: Paul Stevens, Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd.
Site type: Bridge
Period/Dating: Modern (AD 1750-AD 2000)
ITM: E 650219m, N 656198m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.654650, -7.257754
Introduction
An assessment was undertaken in April 2001 at the side of a collapsed bridge (site code BRE-6) on the River Breagagh at Gardens, Kilkenny. The site is 15m upstream of Black Friars Bridge and links Irish Town with the cloisters precinct of the Black Abbey in Kilkenny City. This work forms part of the ongoing pre-development assessment mitigation for the River Nore (Kilkenny City) Drainage Scheme (formerly known as the Kilkenny Flood Relief Scheme). Proposed development includes removal of this site and a 3m-wide section of the left riverbank at this location, as part of the River Breagagh widening. Assessment followed a full building survey of the walls retaining the river.
Background
The River Breagagh or bréagach (‘deceitful’) flows into the River Nore. It acted as a natural boundary to the Early Christian ecclesiastical enclosure of St Canice’s, and later served as the dividing line between the medieval boroughs of High (English) Town and Irish Town, being fortified by a city wall, mural tower and gates. A number of bridges cross the river and most of these replaced earlier medieval examples, including the Blackmills Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge and Irishtown Bridge. This bridge site, now collapsed, was recorded on the 1841 and 1900 Ordnance Survey maps, linking a Malt House compound to the rear of the cloister of the abbey with the former St Canice’s school in Irishtown. However, no bridge is recorded at this location on Rocque’s map of 1758 or Byron’s map of 1787.
Results
The site survives as two stone springing arches on each riverbank, measuring 7.2m in width (north–south) by 4.7–5m, 0.2m in depth (north–south) and 1.2m in height, with surrounding timber pile clusters at the base of each arch within the river, 5.55m long and 0.8m deep.
Excavation of the left-hand springing arch and riverbed revealed a series of oak stakes driven into the river gravels around the base of the stone springing arch. The timber alignments appeared to represent the in situ remains of the foundations for a scaffolding platform, from which a single-span stone arch was constructed. A single trench was opened by hand within the river around the left bank, in low-water conditions, within a small sandbagged coffer-dam. The rectangular cutting was 6m long (east–west) by 1.5m wide and 0.8m deep. Draining of this cutting proved impossible and excavation of the timbers was undertaken by hand in standing water.
The linear timber arrangement was 5.55m long (east–west) and 0.3m wide. Each stake was sharpened to a pencil point, cut by an axe and fire-hardened. The exposed tops, although partially rotted, each contained a round tenon with a shoulder height of 44.14m OD, to fit mortises in scaffolding planks. The majority of the 24 timbers recorded were oak roundwood stakes (average length 0.6m and average diameter 0.09m), ranging from 0.4m to 0.8m in length and 0.07–0.13m in diameter. Two fragments of oak plank were also recovered, one showing signs of burning.
The timber alignment was mirrored on the opposing right-hand bank, which contained 20 exposed timber uprights around the base of the right-hand springing arch over a length of 7.2m (east–west) by 0.8m wide. Further full excavation of this right-hand section is planned during pre-development mitigation in 2002.
2 Killiney View, Albert Road Lower, Glenageary, Co. Dublin
