Search Results for 'County Gaol'

Blake’s Castle is a medieval urban fortified town house at the bottom of Quay Street which was built c1470 with single bay ground and first floors and a two-bay second floor. It has a flat roof with a crenelated parapet with a projecting machicolation on supporting corbels on the top floor above the entrance. This was an opening at the parapet through which defenders could drop material such as boiling water or hot pitch down on would-be attackers. It was built with coursed roughly dressed limestone rubble walls with square headed window openings to the upper floors.

The foundation stone for this bridge was laid on June 29, 1818, by William Le Poer Trench and the structure was completed the following year. The original purpose was to connect the new County Courthouse with the County Gaol on Nuns' Island. It is a fine gently humped five-span bridge which was originally known as ‘The New Bridge’ or ‘Gaol Bridge’.

The original purpose of the structure that is the Salmon Weir Bridge was to connect the new County Courthouse with the County Gaol on Nuns Island. Urban folklore has it that they built a tunnel under the river at the time in order to transfer prisoners from one building to the other, but why would they construct a crossing over and under the water at the same time? It does not make sense. The building of the seven span bridge started in 1818 and finished in 1819.

This remarkable photograph was taken in 1920/21. It shows a group of republican prisoners who are being held in the Town Hall. They are surrounded by barbed wire and are being carefully watched by a soldier you can see standing beside the tin hut. He is wearing a ‘Brodie’ helmet which was a steel combat helmet invented by Englishman John Brodie during World War I. There were probably more soldiers on duty inside the hut watching the detainees, the photographer, and anyone else who might have been was passing. A notice on one of the windows reads “No one is allowed within ten yards of this building.”