Survey Data
Reg No
31301001
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Technical
Original Use
Canal (section of)
In Use As
Canal (section of)
Date
1840 - 1855
Coordinates
70201, 332562
Date Recorded
21/03/2011
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Canal, begun 1845; completed 1851; extant 1897, with seaweed-covered battered embankments.
Appraisal
A canal completed (1851) by William Henry Carter (1783-1859) of Castlemartin, County Kildare, and with the financial assistance of a loan granted (1846) by the Board of Public Works (established 1831) under the Fisheries (Ireland) Act, 1846, representing an important component of the mid nineteenth-century civil engineering heritage of Béal an Mhuirthead [Belmullet] with 'the [cutting] intended to afford to the fishermen a short passage from [Blacksod Bay to Broadhaven Bay], instead of their being obliged…to proceed round the whole coast of the [Mullet Peninsula], or drag their boats with great difficulty over the narrow strip of land through which the canal is to be made' (Sessional Papers 1847, 2-3).