2022

BENNETSBRIDGE ROAD

October 1, 2022 by infomatique

KILKENNY SEPTEMBER 2022

I managed to explore a section of Bennetsbridge Road but did not travel as far as the village but I intend to visit next year when I am in the area.

Bennettsbridge is a village in County Kilkenny in Ireland. It is situated on the River Nore 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) south of Kilkenny city, in the centre of the county. Bennettsbridge is a census town, and has population of 745 as of the 2016 census.

The village is on the R700 road at a stone bridge crossing of the Nore between Kilkenny and Thomastown. It has become a craft centre in recent years, with several pottery and craft producers located at the old mill beside the weir.

The village is part of the parish of Tullaherin which contains an almost intact 9th-century round tower.

THE CHURCH OF ST JOHN THE EVANGELIST

October 1, 2022 by infomatique

DUBLIN ROAD KILKENNY

PRIORY OF ST JOHN THE BAPTIST IN TRIM COUNTY MEATH

The church is often known as the O’Loughlin Memorial Church.

The Church of Saint John the Evangelist, or John’s Church, is a Gothic Revival style church in Kilkenny, Ireland. The Church was designed by William Hague and built from 1903 to 1908 on the site of an earlier church located in the graveyard. The grounds are of little interest but it is worth viewing the interior of the building.

The orginal Roman Catholic Parish Church of St. John’s was situated in Maudlin Street. This earlier church’s construction commemced in 1840 and was finished by 1847. It was the last in line of several churches or Mass Houses that had existed in Maudlin Street. The stone from this earlier church was later used in the building of the Dr. Collier Wing of St. Kieran’s College that opened in 1956. The site of the new St. John’s was donated by the Marquis of Ormonde. The foundation stone was laid on the 22nd May 1897 and consecrated on the 20th of June 1908.

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ANCHORED VOID KILKENNY CASTLE

September 15, 2022 by infomatique

BLACK STEEL SCULPTURE BY MICHAEL WARREN

I have seen, this in travel guides, named “Anchored Void” as well as “Void Anchored” but could not located it until I came across it while exploring a less visited area of Kilkenny Castle grounds.

In 2021, when I first photographed this somewhat isolated sculpture there was a thunder storm ongoing and I had to give up and return to my hotel room. This year the day started out wet but by the time I arrived at this sculpture it was really sunny and warm.

Michael Warren (born 1950 in Gorey, County Wexford, Ireland) is an Irish sculptor who produces site-specific public art.

Inspired by Oisín Kelly, his art teacher at St Columba’s College, Michael Warren studied at Bath Academy of Art, at Trinity College, Dublin and, from 1971–75, at the Accademia di Brera in Milan. He now lives and works in Co. Wexford.

He has a number of very visible works in Ireland, including the large sweeping wood sculpture in front of the Dublin Civic Offices. Wood Quay, where the civic offices stand, was the centre of Viking Dublin and the sculpture evokes the form, and the powerful grace, of a Viking ship. It also reflects vertically the horizontal sweep of the nearby Liffey as it enters its bay. A complex balance of meanings matching a delicate, though massive, balance of substance is typical of his work. Warren himself describes the useful ambiguity of abstraction (Hill 1998)

With Roland Tallon he created Tulach a’ tSolais (Mound of Light), a memorial to the 1798 rebellion. Here, a room was hollowed out of a small hill; the room contains two abstract curved oak forms and is illuminated by natural light falling through a long slot in its ceiling and walls. Despite the unusual and abstract constitution of this memorial and despite the fraught political resonance of the rebellion, Tulach a’ tSolais is popular and something of a local attraction. His Gateway in Dún Laoghaire was less popular with some local people and it was eventually removed and returned to the artist.

At the northern entrance to the village of Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, is a sculpture by Michael Warren, depicting the thrones of the ancient seat of the Kings of South Leinster at Dinn Righ (The hill of the Kings). The Kings of Leinster lived near the village.

A STAND-UP PADDLE BOARD COMMUTE ALONG THE RIVER NORE

September 15, 2022 by infomatique

KILKENNY SEPTEMBER 2022

Modern standup paddleboarding began in the 1940s in Waikiki. John Ah Choy was a local Hawaiian who surfed, but as he got older and was unable to get up and down from his board, he would stand on his board from the break and paddle out with a canoe paddle to catch waves. His sons, Leroy and Bobby Ah Choy, and their friend, Duke Kahanamoku, started to mimic this while they taught surfing to visiting tourists. They did this as a way to keep an eye on surf students while also monitoring the incoming swell. They also utilized the vantage point of being out on the water to take pictures. As the style became popular with other surfers, it took on the name Beach Boy Surfing after the instructors, who were called Waikiki Beach Boys.

The River Nore is one of the principal rivers (along with the River Suir and River Barrow) in the South-East Region of Ireland. The 140-kilometre-long (87 mi) river drains approximately 2,530 square kilometres (977 sq mi) of Leinster and Munster, that encompasses parts of three counties (Tipperary, Laois, Kilkenny). Along with the River Suir and River Barrow, it is one of the constituent rivers of the group known as the Three Sisters.

Starting in the Devil’s Bit Mountain, County Tipperary, the river flows generally southeast, and then south, before its confluence with the River Barrow at Ringwood, and the Barrow railway bridge at Drumdowney, County Kilkenny, which empties into the Celtic Sea at Waterford Harbour, Waterford.

The long term average flow rate of the River Nore is 42.9 cubic metres per second (m3/s)[5] The river is home to the only known extant population of the critically endangered Nore freshwater pearl mussel, and much of its length is listed as a Special Area of Conservation.

Kilkenny fishing club has extensive fishing rights on the River Nore and its tributary, the River Dinan. Popular with anglers, it holds brown trout and salmon.

Some of these weirs along the river have good playboating qualities. The river is long and mostly flat and dotted with weirs at most of the villages it passes through.

Salmon runs on the river Nore were interrupted in 2005 and 2006 by a flood relief scheme in Kilkenny city carried out by the Office of Public Works. Initially budgeted at €13.1 million, the scheme was delivered at a cost in excess of €48 million and did not contain suitable fish passes. This oversight has since been rectified at additional expense and salmon can now ascend the river upstream of Kilkenny city.