Artillery Barracks

At the E end of a NW-SE section of the Esker Riada and guarding the W approaches to the bridge (RO056-018001-) at Shannonbridge. An earthwork of two redoubts was built in 1804 and upgraded to the present works by 1817 to a plan of Lt. Col. Fisher. It was built, together with a barracks on the E side of the River Shannon, to provide a bridgehead into Connaught in the event of a Napoleonic invasion, and it was probably utilised up to the 1870s. An earthwork battery (RO056-017----) survives on Lamb Island in the River Shannon c. 130m to the NE. The main works consist of two blockhouses of three storeys, vaulted over the first and third, at either side of the approaches to the bridge from Ballinasloe, but only that on the S side survives. Each blockhouse supported three pieces of artillery on its vaulted roof and had two levels of musket loops, but that on the S covered the Ballinasloe road which approached from the NW on the SW side of the esker. A sunken road (L c. 70m) led W to a forward redoubt (dims c. 42m N-S; c. 30m E-W), entering a sunken court (dims c. 15m E-W; c. 10m N-S) from which stairs led up to vaulted firing-chambers which covered an ashlar-faced fosse (Wth of base c. 7m; D c. 4m) beyond which a glacis (L c. 180m E-W) led down to the esker. Four guns over the firing chambers also covered the glacis, while at the ground floor, which contained magazines, a caponneire projected into the fosse. The caponniere was protected by flanking fire from a gallery on the ground floor of the redoubt. (Kerrigan 1974; 1980, 178-181; 1995, 222-5) Flanking walls connect the redoubt to the blockhouses in the rear, that at S being broken by the road to Ballinasloe, and further walls with musket loops connected the blockhouses to the river where there were half-bastions. Archaeological testing (04E1310) just NW of the W end of the glacis failed to produce any related archaeological material (Delany 2007). See the attached aerial view taken from the S (002) and W (003).