Category Archives: Built heritage

Mick the Coach

A familiar face in unfamiliar surroundings ….

Ballygalane on the Blackwater

Lismore Canal lock 28_resize

The Lismore Canal lock

The only lock on the Lismore Canal is at Ballygalane, on the River Blackwater. Here is a new page about the canal, with photos of some of its important features.

Waterside Belturbet

Here is a small amount of information about Belturbet and some of its industrial heritage. The photos were taken on a brief visit in July 2011.

Was the Brickey a navigation?

The Brickey is a small river that flows into Dungarvan Bay. Small boats used its lower, tidal reaches, but in the eighteenth century there was a proposal to link the Brickey to the Finisk, another small river that flows into the Blackwater south of Cappoquin.

Waterford County Museum, and others, believe that work began on that project in the mid nineteenth century and that a driveable track along the south bank of a stretch of the river was built as a towpath.

I have visited the river and looked online for further information; my conclusions (with maps and photographs) are here. However, I would welcome further information.

Grand Canal Greenway

Ewan Duffy reports on damage here.

A grand day out in Galway for small boats

Here, courtesy of Kyran O’Gorman, are his notes on navigating the Ballycuirke Canal from Lough Corrib to Ross Lake. Small boats only, and at your own risk.

Where is it?

A correspondent is anxious to identify the location shown in a painting of a bridge over a canal.

It is most likely that the scene is somewhere on the wider waterways of northern England. It is just conceivable that it might be in Ireland, though, so I said I’d put a copy up here and see if anyone can identify it. If you can, please leave a Comment below.

Unidentified canal bridge

Unidentified canal bridge. Click to enlarge

A canal is not just for Christmas …

… but I’d like to know more about Mr Christmas’s canals.

Off the Suir, near Mount Congreve.

How true these words are …

… even today.

Connected system

Limerick flooded again

The waves covered the quays in some places to a depth of three and four feet, and rolled in to the adjoining streets with resistless fury. Shannon-street, Charlotte’s Quay, and the Mall were completely inundated, and in the corn stores on Honan’s-quay, Harvey’s quay, &c, the water reached a height of four feet in some instances.

I already had a page about the floods in Limerick in November 2009; here is an account of the floods in Limerick in 1850.