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In 1581 a detailed contract was drawn up between Lord Deputy Grey and Paul Finglas, a carpenter, to built a wooden bridge at Enniscorthy. It was to be 240 feet long and 11 feet wide and was to have 14 (wooden) arches. It was to have a hand-rail on either side and masonry abutments on either bank. There was to be a masonry tower (ext. dims. 28 feet by 22 feet) at the centre with two gates (Wth 10 feet; H 10 feet), each to be protected by a drawbridge and protcullis. Two upper storeys were to have flower (decorated) windows and murder-holes. It was all to be completed by Lady Day (25th. March), 1583, for the princely sum of £350. (Anon. 1868, 15-16)
The project was too ambitious for Finglas, although he seems to have started the tower, and in 1585 Sir Henry Wallop was asked to take over construction but he too probably failed as a ferry seems to have been the only means of communication between both banks into the late 17th century. A stone bridge was built a few years before 1684 according to Robert Leigh (Hore 1858-9, 464) but it did not last as a stone bridge was built in 1715 (O’Keeffe and Simington 2016, 209-11). This was replaced by the present six-arch structure, built by the Oriel brothers of Hampshire in 1775. The location of the sixteenth century structure is not known, if it was ever built, but it is probably where the present bridge is. (Hore 1901-11, vol. 6, 404-07)
Archaeological testing (18E0359) in the bed of the River Slaney around the eighteenth-century bridge did not recover any evidence of an earlier structure, but testing c. 1m out from the Shannon Quay wall on the E side and c. 40m from the eighteenth century bridge, identified a layer of black silty clay with cobbles (T 0.74m) in two trenches c. 15m apart. This can be interpreted as a midden, and 40 artefacts were recovered from it as well as butchered bone, iron slag and pieces of leather. Amongst the datable material were sherds of North Devon Gravel Tempered ware, North Devon Sgraffito ware, Red glazed earthenware, Black slipware and glass fragments indicating a later seventeenth or early eighteenth century date. (Bangerter 2019 39-40)
Compiled by: Michael Moore
Date of upload: 7 June, 2012
Amended: 18 November 2020
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