On my travels, I came across this beautiful ancient bridge that had a single road linking two towns. Ballina in County Tipperary and Killaloe in County Clare. Hence, the name Ballina-Killaloe. The earliest record of a bridge between Ballina and Killaloe dates back to 1013 in a reference to a wooden bridge spanning the River Shannon.
For many centuries the crossing of the River Shannon on lower Lough Derg was accommodated by perishable wooden bridges, until the present stone bridge with its thirteen arches was built in the early eighteenth century. The arch over the canal was added in the late eighteenth century and the railway arch was constructed in the 1860s at the height of the Railway Age. In 1822 the seven central arches were swept away by flooding and they were replaced by five larger ones in 1825. A small monument at the centre of the bridge commemorates four men from East Clare who were shot on the bridge during the course of the War of Independence in November 1920. The picture was taken about 20 year ago and there were talks of a by-pass to avoid having to cross over the Bridge.
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Author Brian Kermode 