bridge

Five-arch bridge over river, built 1792. Damaged, 1797. Repaired, 1799. Repaired, 1947. Remodelled, 1978, producing present composition. Repointed coursed rubble limestone walls centred on margined tooled limestone ashlar triangular cutwaters to piers having stringcourses below pyramidal capping with replacement reinforced concrete deck supporting galvanised mild steel railings. Series of five segmental arches with drag edged rusticated limestone ashlar block-and-start archivolts centred on drag edged cut-limestone triple keystones. Sited spanning River Nore with grass banks to river.

A bridge representing an important component of the late eighteenth-century civil engineering heritage of County Kilkenny with the architectural value of the composition confirmed not only by the silver-grey limestone dressings demonstrating good quality workmanship, but also by the elegant "sweep" of the arches making a pleasing visual statement at a crossing over the River Nore: meanwhile, a plaque records repairs made to the bridge (1799) 'under the inspection of Edward Hunt Esq. and Anthony Sing...Thos. O'Bryan Mason'. NOTE: An earlier bridge by George Smith (----), precipitated by 'violent floods...which on the 2d of October 1763 swept away the two bridges in Kilkenny, Bennet's bridge and Thomastown bridge, and broke two arches of the bridge in Inistioge' (Encyclopædia Metropolitana XXI 1845, 229), was itself destroyed by a later flood (1787) prompting William Tighe to remark (1802) that 'the bridge of Thomastown has been several times carried away, or greatly damaged, because large buildings near each end confine the current [of the River Nore]' (Tighe 1802, 563-4).