Black Bridge, County Kilkenny

What is recorded here

Black Bridge in Coan East crouches over the Dinin like a railway bridge hiding from a train. The ivy is helping with the disguise, but leaving its date plaque on is pure amateur.

Single-arch rubble limestone road bridge over river, c.1875, on site of earlier bridge, pre-1840. Irregular coursed squared rubble limestone walls with battered piers having rock-faced dressed limestone quoins, cut-limestone stringcourse supporting parapet having cut-stone date stone/plaque, and part ivy-clad cut-limestone coping. Single segmental arch with rock-faced cut-limestone voussoirs, and tooled limestone ashlar soffits. Sited spanning Dinin River with overgrown grass banks to river.

Representing an important element of the mid to late nineteenth-century civil engineering legacy of County Kilkenny a small-scale low-slung bridge reminiscent of contemporary railway bridges displaying a traditional construction in unrefined locally-sourced stone makes a picturesque, if subtle impression in the rural landscape.

From the Buildings of Ireland (National Inventory of Architectural Heritage) record 12401111

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