If you’re (a) in Limerick, Tipperary or Clare and (b) interested in the history of Irish waterways, you are welcome to the come to the Community Centre in Montpelier (that’s on the east side of the bridge over the Shannon at O’Briensbridge) on Wednesday 20 May 2009 at 8.30pm.
I’ll be talking about the waterways heritage of O’Briensbridge, with four main themes:
- an overview of the Limerick–Killaloe navigation, with particular reference to the O’Briensbridge area
- the early years of horse-drawn and man-powered boats and the heritage artefacts from that time
- the turf trade from Macnab’s Bog to the Stein Brown distillery in Limerick (we’ve recently located the old quay)
- the navigation in the early years of steam, and some of Charles Wye Williams’s innovative vessels.
Mick Murtagh will be showing photos of the conservation and restoration work done by the community on the old towing-paths, which are now classed as National Looped Walks. That work has preserved and made accessible a veritable treasury of waterways artefacts, and the question is whether that richness can be built on in the interests of the sustainable development of O’Briensbridge, Montpelier and (if I may mention it) Castleconnell, Clonlara and Killaloe.
Irish waterways history 