The Ha’Penny Bridge

Written about the up and down history of what is now the most famous bridge in the country.  However, it might have been demolished on a number of occasions.This was broadcast on RTE Radio 1’s Sunday Miscellany on 25 August, 2013.

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William Butler Yeats’ poem ‘September 1913’ was, as every secondary school student is told, written as a bitter attack on the people of Dublin of a century ago who failed to provide money for the erection of a gallery to house 29 paintings offered to the city by Sir Hugh Lane.

 

The poem condemns the merchant class who fumbled in their greasy tills rather than aspiring to the higher things in life.  But what we were never told is that the proposed site of the Gallery, had the support been forthcoming, would have involved the demolition of what is now a landmark of Dublin city.  Indeed it is possibly the city’s defining landmark that features on the cover of practically every guide book to the capital.  Because had Yeats and the others proposing the gallery project got their way the Ha’penny Bridge over the River Liffey would have been demolished and a new bridge, conveniently capable of taking wheel based traffic but also housing the small art gallery, would have been erected in its stead.

 

By the time of the gallery proposal the Ha’Penny bridge was nearly 100 years old. Originally called the Wellington Bridge it was built in 1816 by William Walsh, who erected it at his own expense to replace his ferry service at this strategic point across the river Liffey.  Believed to have been designed by John Windsor and built by the Colebrookdale Company of Shropshire, England, the cast iron bridge is 141 feet long, has a single graceful span and three lanterns to light the way for those who paid the Ha’penny toll at the turnstiles either end.

 

By the time the city’s cultural leaders decided that this was the best place for a new gallery, the bridge had come to be regarded by many of those in power as an inconvenience to the free-flow of the city’s increasing vehicular traffic.  Therefore the combination of bridge and gallery conveniently killed two birds.

 

However, as Yeats tells us, this plan for the gallery did not go ahead – I wonder if adding the half pence to the pence was an oblique reference to the bridge’s toll – and it was to be nearly another two decades before the Hugh Lane Gallery ultimately found a much larger home at Parnell Square on the north side of the city.  This thought did not necessarily mean that the bridge was going to survive.  Indeed, far from it.

 

For most of the century after September 1913 the Ha’Penny bridge lived an almost charmed existence, surviving many a near scrape with demolition crews.

 

Although Yeats had high motives, subsequent attempts to remove it from the Liffeyscape were not prompted by lofty ideas of art for the people.  Specifically the bridge was imperilled by the desire to ease traffic congestion at College Green by improving circulation between the Dame Street area on the south side of the river and Liffey Street on the north side.

 

The little bridge seemed to live an almost dual life during this time.  Its real name was (and continues to be) the Liffey Bridge – but no-one used that.  In popular parlance it was known by its affectionate moniker, the Ha’penny Bridge.   However, in the lexicon of the bureaucrat and planner it was always known, intentionally demeaning one presumes, as ‘the Metal Bridge’.  Presumably, the Metal Bridge would be easier to demolish than the Ha’Penny Bridge.

 

After Yeats despaired of Ireland’s materialism the next assault on the bridge came when an urban planning competition was held to help shape the future of the city that would once again become a capital after the adoption of the Home Rule Bill.  Interestingly, every entry proposed doing away with what organisers described as this ‘ignoble little bridge’.  Though these plans were never followed up on, what Yeats had and others had started, had now taken on what seemed an almost unstoppable momentum.

 

In 1927 the Motor News magazine proposed a number of ‘improvements’ to help ease Dublin’s growing motor traffic.  Among these was the replacement of Butt Bridge, the erection of a another bridge east of the Custom’s House – now served by the Sam Beckett bridge, as well as the demolition of the Metal Bridge and its replacement with a proper bridge to cater for the city’s burgeoning car population.  However, the Ha’penny bridge stayed put.

 

The next threat came in the late 1940s when Dublin Corporation again proposed its demolition.  Their lack of action, apparently due to a scarcity of building materials, came in for stinging criticism in the Dail.  Deputies railed against the delay which, they said, not only affected traffic but also meant more unemployment and emigration.

 

The final and most serious attempt to demolish the bridge came in the 1960s when a new road between South Great George’s Street and Liffey Street was proposed.  According to one TD this was a project that would benefit the country as a whole.  Now, the little bridge was not only an irritant to the city, it was holding back ‘national progress’.  The road that the potential new bridge would serve took the form, thankfully on paper only, of a huge raised dual carriageway that smashed through Temple Bar and crossed over the Liffey at a height.

 

But as the covers to the guide books show today that did not happen.  The Ha’penny bridge survived by what seems a combination of accident, inertia and lack of funds.  But also one has to think that its own innate charm played a role – were there people in key positions who quietly resisted the eradication of the beloved bridge.  Or maybe it had finally become appreciated by the people of Dublin, and the people who ran Dublin, for its architectural significance.

 

Whatever the reason, today the Ha’Penny Bridge is an integral and inseparable part of Dublin’s identity.  Ironically this bridge, now nearly 200 years old, has become the unique icon of modern Dublin.  And should anyone propose its demolition today for a road, or even indeed an art gallery, they would most like be met with a wave of ire that would make William Butler Yeats’ poem of a century ago appear a paean of praise to our predecessors.