Tag Archives: quay

Killaloe and Ballina

Nice to see they’re going to get a Discover Day.

The Ballycuirke Canal and Lough Corrib

Thanks to Padhraic Conneally, who left a Comment that started the hunt, and to Zara Brady (IWAI Corrib), who visited the site to ask about something else entirely, and finally to Trevor Northage of AnglingCharts.com, who provided the name and other information, we now have two extra Galway waterways to add to the list. They’re both covered, with maps, on this page, although only the larger, the Ballycuirke Canal, gets its name in the heading.

I would welcome more information about both canals. It seems that the Ballycuirke was built for drainage but also used for transport; I would be glad to know more about such transport.

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.

Annoying the neighbours

It would be unfair to condemn the proposed opening of a canal to Clones without also condemning the proposed reopening of the Park Canal in Limerick (and the Newry, when I get around to it). The link is to a top-level page; the first substantive page has a lead to the second, the second to the third and so on up to the fifth.

Pat Lysaght to the rescue

The Limerick Leader has a story that updates my piece on Limerick dredging.

Lough Derg 1839

Drawings now uploaded. Much more activity in these than in the Lough Ree equivalents, with steamers towing barges, turf boats, the surveyors’ cutter and other excitements.

 

 

Plot 8 has been NAMAed

The development of the Plot 8 site at the Grand Canal Docks, Ringsend, was to be the most valuable of three sites to be sold by Waterways Ireland, with Craggy Island hoping to use the proceeds to fund the Ulster Canal. The DDDA’s interest in Plot 8 has now passed to NAMA.

I provided background information from the Oireachtas Committee of Public Accounts here; the DDDA announcement is here but NAMA, alas, has no information at the moment.

DDDA had withdrawn permission for IWAI Dublin Branch to work on the graving docks at the site.

Two more sisters

Members of the Heritage Boat Association have, in recent weeks, visited Piltown (Co Kilkenny) and Portlaw (Co Waterford) by barge, the first time in many years that large vessels have been up those rivers.

Many of the published accounts of Portlaw, including the Heritage Council’s Heritage Conservation Plan, pay inadequate attention to the navigation of the Clodiagh; it may have been even richer than we thought.

The HBA has a press release about some significant finds at Portlaw.

The owners of the barge Hawthorn joined other boats for the trips and wrote about them here:

Here is the relevant section of the OSI map for Portlaw (choose one of the Historic options). Here is where the Pil joins the Suir (zoomed out).

Here is my own article (in need of updating) about Portlaw and the Clodiagh.

Incidentally, I contend that the OSI maps are wrong in describing the gates on the canal as flood gates: they would open to, rather than close against, an incoming flood, and would prevent the discharge of an outgoing flood.

 

Forts, weirs, piers, power stations …

… just some of the things you can see from the Killimer to Tarbert ferry.

Actually, I lied about the weirs, but they were there once. As were the salmon.