Bellacorick Bridge

Four-arch bridge over river, built 1820-1; dated 1820. Part repointed coursed cut-limestone walls centred on tooled limestone ashlar rounded triangular cutwaters having domed pyramidal capping with cut-limestone stringcourses supporting parapets having tooled cut-limestone coping centred on rope twist-detailed cut-limestone date stone ("1820"). Series of four elliptical arches between cast-iron "Pattress" tie plates with drag edged tooled limestone ashlar voussoirs. Sited spanning Owenmore River with unkempt banks to river.

A bridge representing an important component of the early nineteenth-century civil engineering heritage of County Mayo with the architectural value of the composition, one designed by William Bald (c.1789-1857) 'BY ORDER OF THE GRAND JURY...RIGHT HON DENIS BROWNE [1763-1828] FOREMAN', confirmed not only by the construction in a multi-toned limestone with blue-grey dressings producing a mild polychromatic palette, but also by the elegant "sweep" of the arches making a pleasing visual statement at a crossing over the Owenmore River: meanwhile, a much-weathered benchmark remains of additional interest for the connections with cartography and the preparation of maps by the Ordnance Survey (established 1824). NOTE: Bellacorick Bridge is colloquially known as "The Musical Bridge" owing to the octaves glissando or octaves staccato produced when a fist-sized round stone 'of a few pounds weight' is run or tapped in quick succession along the top of the north parapet. A missing piece of masonry at its west end is supposedly the result of a cautionary prediction by the seventeenth-century oracle, Brian Rua Ó Cearbhain, who prophesised that the completion of a crossing over the Owenmore River would result in the sudden death of whoever it was that laid the last stone.