Wathergate Street

THE TOWN OF TRIM IN COUNTY MEATH

Trim (Irish: Baile Átha Troim, meaning ‘town at the ford of elderflowers’) is a town in County Meath, Ireland.

The site of Trim was known from the earliest times as a fording point of the river Boyne, at the upper limits of navigation. It is thought that the Watergate Street crossing is the original ford point. The first clear evidence of settlement is described in the Book of Armagh which details the foundation of a monastery by St Loman in 432 A.D.

The original four-span Watergate road bridge, built 1904, consisted of four cast-iron spans resting on concrete piers. It was an excellent example of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century construction. Cast-iron and concrete construction dating from this period is unusual in Ireland. A plaque on the west side of bridge read: ‘Watergate Bridge 1904 built by J.H. Moore G.S. Collins & Newman. Contractors”.

As the old bridge had fallen into disrepair and provided a flooding constraint the bridge had to be replaced. After completing detailed options analysis and evaluation, the architects undertook the design of a low rise, parabolic arch, road bridge, with cantilevered pedestrian walkways.

The new bridge spans 35m and comprises pentagonal arch chords tapering in both directions with pairs of Macalloy hanger bars connected to the main longitudinal members. Structural steel transverse members and end diaphragms support a 225mm reinforced concrete deck, which acts compositely with superstructure steelwork. The clear span arch solution minimised the structural depth and eliminated the significant in-river piers that had exacerbated the regular upstream flooding problems.

In 2010 a medieval cobbled street surface was uncovered in Trim while a trench was being dug along Watergate Street as part of the town’s street reconstruction programme. The former street was three-and-a-half feet below the current ground level and was discovered as a trench was being excavated to lay a sewer pipe.