The coffin on the Black Bridge: A story from the River Brosna

Tomas Devery outlines the history of the River Brosna and how it shaped how people lived in Pollagh, County Offaly. Tomas Devery interviewed his father, Mick Devery, about the history of the river. There were no roads into the village until the 1930s. Villagers had to walk along the banks of the canal to Tullamore in one direction, or to Ferbane on the other for supplies. The Brosna flooded the fields across its callows every winter, making Pollagh almost inaccessible for months at a time. Before the road bridge was built, locals used a makeshift wooden structure called the Black Bridge. During times of flooding it was barely above water. Mick Devery tells a story of the lengths a local man called Tim Duffy had to go to to get a pint, and an interesting encounter he had on the Black Bridge. Learn how isolated and difficult things were for locals at the time, and how different life was for them.