Survey Data
Reg No
41401908
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Artistic, Social, Technical
Original Use
Water pump
Date
1860 - 1880
Coordinates
276878, 320586
Date Recorded
20/05/2012
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Freestanding cast-iron water pump, erected c.1870. Round-plan, with banded shaft, fluted domed cap and pointed finial. Ram's head bucket grip and fluting to spout, and curved cow's tail handle. Set on concrete base covering well, protected by recent railings to east, south and west with roughcast rendered square-plan corner piers.
Appraisal
This attractive water pump exhibits artistic detailing in its design, which serves to enliven this otherwise functional object. Water pumps such as this played an important social and functional role in nineteenth and twentieth-century Ireland, providing a communal water source for the locality as well as a popular social gathering place. Centrally located within the village of Doohamlet, to the east of All Saints Catholic Church, this water pump contributes to the nineteenth-century character of this rural village.