Bannow Bridge

Three-arch humpback bridge over river, c.1775. Part ivy-covered rubble stone walls with remains of cut-limestone coping to parapets. Series of three elliptical arches on tooled limestone ashlar triangular cutwaters having pyramidal capping with tooled limestone ashlar voussoirs. Sited spanning Shournagh River.

A bridge representing an integral component of the eighteenth-century civil engineering heritage of County Cork with the architectural value of the composition suggested not only by the construction in a russet coloured fieldstone with silver-grey limestone dressings producing a two-tone palette, but also by the elegant "sweep" of the arches making a pleasing visual statement at a crossing over the Shournagh River. NOTE: The bridge is labelled as "Leemount Bridge" on the Ordnance Survey County Cork Sheet 73 (1842) but was renamed as Bannow Bridge following the construction of a new Leemount Bridge (1846-8) as part of the so-called "Carrigrohane Straight" (see 20907353). The bridge was also known locally as Crubeen Bridge 'which is said to have its origin [in] a party of old-fashioned anglers who sported on the banks of the Shournagh [and] arranged to meet on the bridge at a certain hour to enjoy the contents of a basket provided for their nourishment. They invariably found the principal item on the menu consisted of "Crubeens" or pigs feet, then popular with all Corkonians, and, true to their conditions, [they] nicknamed the rendezvous "Crubeen" as [a] fit and proper radar than the high sounding title Bannow Bridge' (The Schools' Collection Volume 0341, 173-4).