Tag Archives: Portarlington

Grand water

Here is a page about the feeders that supplied water to the Grand Canal. There will soon be a page about the Royal Canal feeders; these will lead to an examination of the current and proposed supply of water to the Royal.

Portarlington and Mountmellick

I have added some photos and maps to the page about the Mountmellick Line of the Grand Canal. Thanks to Martin O’Shea for two of the photos.

Russells of Portarlington, timber merchants

I am indebted to Eleanor Russell for permission to reproduce four photos of the canal operations of Messrs Russells of Portarlington, timber merchants and sawmills operators. They used the Royal and Grand Canals (and the Barrow Line and Mountmellick Branch) to carry timber cut on large estates to their sawmills. One of the estates on which they cut timber was Rockville, and Eleanor Russell has also given me permission to use a photo of Rockville House, taken in 1913, on my page about the Rockville Navigations.

Buggering up the Barrow

Have you ever wondered, as you grounded on a sand bar or fought a current upstream, quite why the River Barrow is so challenging?

Here is a confession (with photos) from the man wot done it — in 1931 ….

The upper Barrow

Charlie Horan (of Go with the Flow, the canoe expedition specialists) left a comment on my post about Abbeyleix (below) saying

I have some very very interesting pictures of the Barrow near source in flood taken just two weeks ago ….

And here they are. They are indeed interesting!

White water (courtesy Eamonn and Charlie Horan)

Eek (courtesy Eamonn and Charlie Horan)

The burling Barrow brown (as Gerald Manley Hopkins called it) (courtesy Eamonn and Charlie Horan)

Even the indefatigable F E Prothero might have been put off …. He canoed down from Mountmellick to Athy in 1897, taking about eight and a half hours. Major Rowland Raven-Hart said that the Barrow had been canoed from a little above Portarlington (which is downstream of Mountmellick); there is a PDF of his book here.