Category Archives: Ireland

Canal mooring rules

Posted on Tuesday 25 September 2012 | 1 comment

Waterways Ireland issued two press releases about moorings today. The first was the usual one about winter moorings on the Shannon and the SEW; the second was about the canals. Here, unedited, is the text of the second.

Canal Mooring Rules Coming into Force

Waterways Ireland announced in June 2012 that the Canal Bye-laws on the Grand & Royal Canal and Barrow Navigation are to be enforced from autumn 2012, with an accompanying change in the permit system allowing for year-long mooring permits and locations.

Part of bringing in this new location-based permit has been the identification of locations suitable for extended mooring. This process is now completed and work has begun in some areas to improve accessibility.

Waterways Ireland will roll out Extended Mooring Permit applications by area, rather than giving a date when applications for the permit will open. For boat owners this will mean that enforcement of the maximum stay rule will not commence in an area until after boat owners have had the opportunity to purchase an Extended Mooring Permit.

The initial 12 month Extended Mooring Permit will cost €152 and will only be available to boats already holding a valid annual Mooring and Passage Permit.

Boats that cruise and move (staying at a mooring for up to 5 days) will not be in breach of the Bye-laws or require an Extended Mooring Permit.

Waterways Ireland has proposed a small number of draft amendments to the current Bye-laws which date from 1988. These include proposals to provide a range of charges for mooring permits that reflect the location and services provided throughout the canals and also will take into account the size of boat. These proposals include low cost rural moorings on soft banks to ensure the canals are accessible for everyone who owns a boat and requires a mooring. Boat owners allocated an extended mooring location in key areas in villages or towns or with services should be aware that if the new Bye-laws are approved Waterways Ireland will increase the charges for moorings in the future to reflect the location, services, and size of boat.

Waterways Ireland recognises the current situation whereby a small number of boat owners use their boats as their sole or permanent residence. Proposals to make provision for this use of the navigation property have been included in the Bye-law changes.

Furthermore Waterways Ireland intends to work towards the provision of a small number of serviced house boat moorings on the canal network. Such provision will be subject to finance, land availability and compliance with requisite statutory approvals.

Waterways Ireland recognises that a transition period of a number of years will be required to implement this. In the interim these boat owners should apply for an Extended Mooring Permit.

The draft Bye Law amendments are currently being considered by Waterways Ireland’s sponsor Departments. When Waterways Ireland has Ministerial consent, it will proceed to public consultation on the proposed Bye-law amendments.

Waterways Ireland will continue to contact permit holders regularly to ensure they are kept up to date with the roll-out of the new permit. All queries about the enforcement of the current bye-laws or the Extended Mooring Permit should be directed to Shane Anderson, Assistant Inspector of Navigation: Tel no +353 (0)87 286 5726, Email shane.anderson@waterwaysireland.org . Queries about houseboats should be directed to Property & Legal Section Tel no +44 (0)28 6632 3004.

These changes are necessary steps to improve the management of the canals and waterway amenities for both the navigational and recreational user, so that investment in the new infrastructure and facilities which Waterways Ireland has undertaken is maximised for every user.

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Posted in Built heritage, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Operations, People, Politics, Sources, waterways, Waterways management

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The Repealer

Posted on Tuesday 25 September 2012 | Leave a comment

Here is a brief account of a trip from Waterford to new Ross by steamer in 1842.

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Posted in Economic activities, Extant waterways, Forgotten navigations, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Operations, People, Politics, Scenery, Steamers, Suir, Tourism, waterways

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Kildare Street

Posted on Tuesday 25 September 2012 | 1 comment

In the recent past, I have made several postings referring to debates or parliamentary questions in the Dáil or Seanad. I was able to do do because of the service provided by the excellent KildareStreet.com website. The site allowed me to identify and set key words for topics that interested me (waterways, for instance); it then sent me alerts when any of those topics was mentioned. Simple, pain-free, efficient — and an excellent way of making the Oireachtas seem slightly more important. KildareStreet also provided a search function and a facility for reading and commenting on recent debates. I found the Oireachtas’s own debates website far less user-friendly.

The Oireachtas has now decided to change its system — and to make it worse. Not only is its own site inadequate (no alerts, no search, despite there being a search button) but it has ceased to supply the XML-formatted data that enabled KildareStreet.com to work and has thereby crippled what was a really useful service.

If there are any computer-literate politicians in Dáil or Seanad, I would be grateful if they would enable the KildateStreet.com service to be restored.

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Posted in Economic activities, Ireland, Non-waterway, Politics, Sources

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Speeding on canals …

Posted on Friday 21 September 2012 | Leave a comment

… and the perils thereof:

Having reached the highest level of the great table-land, we traversed a space of fifteen miles without a lock; and here a curious phenomenon, illustrating the incompressibility of water, arrested our attention. About every twenty or thirty minutes, the horses are obliged to stop for five or six minutes, to take breath, the cause of which was this: — The velocity of the boat impelled the water in the canal with such force that it gradually rose so as to approach the summits of the banks, when it began to recoil, so as actually to form a back-water or stream, when the horses were unable to make head, and therefore stopped till the equilibrium of the canal was restored.

James Johnson MD A Tour in Ireland with Meditations and Reflections S Highley, London 1844

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Posted in Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Operations, waterways

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Hunting Newbury

Posted on Friday 21 September 2012 | 6 comments

In his A Tour in Ireland with Meditations and Reflections [S Highley, London 1844], James Johnson MD describes a flyboat trip on the Grand Canal from Dublin. He says:

At Newbury, a station near Edenderry, I debarked, and spent two or three days at the hospitable mansion of Newbury Hall, with my excellent friend Mr Wolstenholme and family, where I also met my amiable friend, Mrs Evans, of Portrane.

I have been trying to find Newbury. So far, the most likely candidate seems to be Newberry Hall, in Carbury, Co Kildare; the spelling Newberry is given on the ~1840 [Historic 6″] OSI map whereas the ~1900 [Historic 25″] map gives Newbury.

The Hall is indeed fairly close to Edenderry, but if Johnson got off the boat in Edenderry I’d have expected him to refer to it as Edenderry harbour. Looking at the OSI map (link above), the only other sensible point of debarkation would (I think) have been at Ticknevin Bridge, from which there was a road towards Newbury, but I have no evidence that it was Newbury station.

I would welcome enlightenment.

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Posted in Ashore, Built heritage, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Operations, People, Sources, waterways, Waterways management

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Wordling Repeal

Posted on Friday 21 September 2012 | Leave a comment

On 22 April 1834 Daniel O’Connell, MP for Dublin but a native of Kerry, argued in the House of Commons at Westminster for, IIRC, five hours in favour of the repeal of the Act of Union. Here is what Wordle makes of his speech.

Daniel O’Connell Wordled

On the following day Thomas Spring-Rice, MP for Cambridge but a native of Limerick, responded for six hours. Here is what Wordle made of it.

Thomas Spring-Rice Wordled

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Posted in Charles Wye Williams, Economic activities, Ireland, Non-waterway, People, Politics, Shannon, shannon estuary, waterways

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Urination in Co Clare

Posted on Friday 21 September 2012 | Leave a comment

In County Clare, urination has a long and distinguished history. Here is a piece about one early example: while it was not on inland waters, I hope that the involvement of the Head Pacificator, renowned for his efforts to promote the Shannon, as well as of two authors who provide useful information about the river, will excuse the inclusion.

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Posted in Charles Wye Williams, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Non-waterway, Operations, People, Politics, Scenery, waterways, Weather

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Praise for Kilrush

Posted on Wednesday 19 September 2012 | Leave a comment

Kilrush across the creek

It was highly gratifying to witness the animation that prevailed in Kilrush — the neatness of the little shops, the flagged pathway, and the absence of accumulated dirt, so prominent and offensive a peculiarity of most small towns in Ireland. The people about Kilrush (whose population is 5000) are handsome, and appear considerably more intelligent than in many other places.

Jonathan Binns The Miseries and Beauties of Ireland Vol II Longman, Orme, Brown and Co, London 1837

 

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Posted in Ashore, Built heritage, Charles Wye Williams, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Forgotten navigations, Industrial heritage, Ireland, People, Politics, Scenery, Shannon, shannon estuary, Sources, Steamers, The cattle trade, The fishing trade, The turf trade, Tourism, waterways

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WI, Clare Daly, Lowtown

Posted on Tuesday 18 September 2012 | Leave a comment

Update from Clare Daly TD here.

 

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Posted in Ashore, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Ireland, Operations, People, Politics, Sources, waterways, Waterways management

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The Lagan and Lough Neagh in 1830

Posted on Monday 17 September 2012 | Leave a comment

Philip Dixon Hardy wrote in The Northern Tourist, or Stranger’s Guide to the north and north west of Ireland: including a particular description of Belfast, the Giant’s Causeway, and every object of picturesque interest in the district referred to William Curry, Jun and Co, Dublin 1830:

The river Lagan, although of very considerable breadth in the immediate vicinity of Belfast, and running nearly thirty miles, is yet by far too inconsiderable to be of any great advantage to the town in the way of trade or commerce. By its means, however, a regular communication is kept up between Belfast, Lisburn, and Lough Neagh. Since the year 1755, upwards of £100,000 have been expended in forming a canal, by the assistance of cuts in various places along the line of the river, where it was found too shallow for lighters to pass.

The Lagan Navigation Company have now the direction of the entire line, and have made such judicious improvements, as materially to promote the desired object — a speedy transit of goods and merchandise. This, however, can, after all, be only partially accomplished, as, from the circumstance of the Company not being able to have a horse-track-way along the entire line, nor to introduce steam power, the journey can be performed in a much shorter space of time by waggons and drays going direct. On Lough Neagh there is a small steam-vessel, by which the goods taken up in the lighters are rapidly conveyed to the different towns which lie in various directions round that extensive sheet of water.

W A McCutcheon, in The Canals of the North of Ireland David and Charles, Dawlish 1965, confirms the point about the trackway:

As a result [of various improvements in the early 1800s] traffic greatly increased, though water supply problems remained, and there was a horse-towing path for only part of the length of the navigation.

He gives no details, though, so I don’t know why the trackway was incomplete, how lighters travelled on those stretches that had no trackway or when and how the deficiency was remedied. My guess is that those stretches were along the river rather than the artificial cuts and that the riparian landowners were unhelpful, but I would welcome further information.

McCutcheon does not mention the steamer on Lough Neagh. However, D B McNeill mentions it in Coastal Passenger Steamers and Inland Navigations in the North of Ireland Belfast Museum and Art Gallery Transport Handbook No 3 1960:

The first steamer on the lough was the Lagan Navigation Company’s Marchioness of Donegall. She was built by Ritchie and MacLaine of Belfast, her engines were obtained from David Napier of Glasgow and she was launched at Ellis Gut in November, 1821. She was the first inland navigation steamer in Ireland and was used for towing the Lagan canal boats across the lough. When new, she was reputed to have had a speed of two knots. She was uneconomical and her owners tried to sell her in 1824, but there were no buyers. It is believed the Marquess of Donegall used her occasionally as a yacht. She was broken up sometime about 1840 and her engines were stored in Belfast.

In his Irish Passenger Steamship Services Volume 1: North of IrelandAugustus M Kelley Publishers, New York 1969 he says that the Marchioness was a wooden paddle steamer, built in 1821 and broken up in 1843, 73′ long with a beam of 16′, with a simple single-cylinder engine. He says that the engine cost £1,400, provided 30hp and gave her a speed of 6 knots. A passenger service was considered but never provided, but picnic parties could charter the boat for five guineas a day.

 

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Posted in Built heritage, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Forgotten navigations, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Operations, Sources, Steamers, Ulster Canal, waterways, Waterways management

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