Survey Data
Reg No
11901807
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Historical, Social, Technical
Original Use
Foot bridge
In Use As
Foot bridge
Date
1790 - 1810
Coordinates
275699, 218036
Date Recorded
21/10/2002
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Single-arch cut-stone footbridge over canal, c.1800, with cut-stone voussoirs. Coursed cut-stone walls. Cut-stone piers. Coursed cut-stone parapet walls. Single segmental arch. Hammer dressed cut-stone voussoirs. Red brick soffits. Sited spanning Grand Canal (Milltown Branch) providing access to Milltown Mill with grass banks to canal.
Appraisal
Milltown Bridge is a fine stone footbridge that forms a picturesque feature on the Grand Canal (Milltown Branch) and is one of a group of bridges on the section of that canal that passes through County Kildare. The construction of the arch that has retained its original shape is of technical and engineering merit. The bridge exhibits good quality stone masonry and fine, crisp joints. The bridge is of considerable historical and social significance as a reminder of the canal network development in Ireland, which brought about many technical advances and encouraged the development of commercial activity in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries. The bridge forms a neat sub-group with the Milltown Mills (11901808/KD-18-08), to which it provides access.