Carnsore Pier

Pier, dated 1884-5, on a rectangular plan with mass concrete battered walls on submerged concrete block foundations having lichen-spotted cut-granite rounded coping supporting cast-iron mooring loops. Set extending into Saint George's Channel.

A pier erected by the Yorkshire-born contractor Thomas Ingham Dixon (----) of Donnybrook to designs by Robert Manning (1816-97), Chief Engineer to the Board of Public Works (appointed 1874; retired 1891; NA OPW 1884 8/61), representing an important component of the late nineteenth-century built heritage of south County Wexford with the engineering or technical dexterity of the composition confirmed by the pioneering mass concrete construction which, unlike the contemporary stone-faced Cheekpoint Pier (1884-6) by Manning and Dixon in neighbouring County Waterford (see 22901008), '[made] no effort to conceal the true nature of the concrete walls [as] there was no need to tie [it] back, structurally or aesthetically, to [a] pre-existing structure' (Shotton 2018 II, 1191). NOTE: A nearby pillar commemorates 'the brave men of Carnsore District who crewed the oared lifeboat from 1859-1897...under the coxswains of Patrick Cavanagh 1861-1891 and John Wall 1891-1897'.