Glennanean Bridge

Single-arch road bridge over river, built 1829-30; extant 1838. Tuck pointed coursed cut-sandstone walls on stepped buttressed base having grass-covered coping with rendered rounded coping to parapets. Single pointed arch with drag edged tooled limestone ashlar voussoirs. Sited spanning Gleann na nÉan [Glennanean River] with unkempt banks to river.

A bridge erected to a design by Alexander Nimmo (1783-1832), Engineer to the Western District (appointed 1822; replaced 1831), widely accepted as a particularly important component of the early nineteenth-century civil engineering heritage of Contae Mhaigh Eo [County Mayo] with the architectural value of the composition confirmed not only by the construction in a rough cut ruby-coloured sandstone offset by "sparrow pecked" sheer limestone dressings producing a mild polychromatic palette, but also by the "pointed" profile of the lofty arch making a dramatic visual statement at a gorge-like crossing over the minor Gleann na nÉan [Glennanean River]: meanwhile, a discreet benchmark remains of additional interest for the connections with cartography and the preparation of maps by the Ordnance Survey (established 1824).