Shrule Bridge

The saved account records: Single-arch road bridge over river, extant 1857.

The saved account records: Part creeper- or ivy-covered tuck pointed snecked rock faced limestone battered walls with benchmark-inscribed drag edged rock faced limestone ashlar parapets having mass-concrete rounded coping.

The saved account records: Single segmental arch between drag edged tooled limestone ashlar "bas-relief" piers with drag edged rock faced limestone ashlar radiating voussoirs.

The saved account records: Sited spanning Black River with unkempt banks to river.

Shrule Bridge matters for the exact reasons given in its official assessment, rather than merely because it is an old structure. The source records: A bridge representing an integral component of the mid nineteenth-century civil engineering heritage of south County Mayo with the architectural value of the composition, one succeeding an eighteenth-century bridge illustrated in "The Dublin Penny Journal" (9th February, 1833), confirmed not only by the rock faced surface finish demonstrating good quality workmanship, but also by the elegant "sweep" of the arch making a pleasing visual statement at a crossing over the Black River: meanwhile, a much weathered benchmark remains of additional interest for the connections with cartography and the preparation of maps… This explains what the place adds to local life, the street or the surviving built history.