History of our local roads serve out a timely lesson for future development

KILMALLOCK HAS BEEN IN DECLINE SINCE IT WAS BYPASSED BY THE CURRENT LIMERICK - CORK ROAD

THE recent decision to run the proposed M20 Motorway corridor generally along the route of the current N20 road, bypassing Charleville, Buttevant and Mallow (even though the actual route has yet to be chosen) has created a new found interest in the roads around Charleville, and how and when they first appeared.

We have insight into how they originated through the research of the late historian Jim Meagher when he was writing a series of articles on Old Charleville in 1957 for The Kerryman, the newspaper that was forerunner to the present Corkman, which, hopefully, you are now reading.

In that article Mr. Meagher states that in the year 1750 there were only three roads leading to the town of Charleville, namely the Kilmallock Road, the Shandrum Road via Broghill and the old Cork Road.

The Kilmallock road was only cut five years previously in 1745, as up to that there was no connecting road between the towns of Charleville in North Cork and Kilmallock in South Limerick.

Prior to that time there was very little wheel traffic, and people that had a horse travelled on horseback along double ditches, which were wide enough to let two horses pass abreast. Double ditches were mainly townland boundaries, and were from the earliest times recognised as the common right-of-way routes.

Many of the double ditches have now disappeared as some were flattened by landowners or levelled to form the foundations of some of our present-day roadways.

In those far-off days the roads received little attention, and were in such bad repair that in 1732 an Act was passed in the Irish House of Commons dealing with the state of the roads around Charleville and Limerick. This Act became known as the Limerick Act and referred to the state of the roads between Limerick City and Cork City, which at that time did not touch on Charleville but went from Limerick to Kilmallock via Ballyhoura, Ardskeagh (Ballyhea), in Co. Cork and on to Whitechurch and Cork City.

There was a toll house at Ardskeagh, and all tolls collected from travellers were divided between the counties of Cork and Limerick.

Tolls and turn-pikes were abolished by an Act of Parliament in 1857 and the roads were handed over to the Counties and the Grand Jury to provide for them as ordinary public roads.

In 1831 the road from Charleville to Limerick via Croom was cut, and this heralded the demise of Kilmallock as the traffic to and from Cork was not now passing through the Co. Limerick town as it previously had been. The town steadily declined and has never recovered its former status to this day.

Is history about to be repeated with the new M20 motorway bypassing Charleville town?

To ensure that the Charleville doesn’t go the way of Kilmallock the townspeople need to be vigilant and ensure that the town and general area will benefit from the new carriageway, rather than the town suffering and going into decline because of the new traffic arrangements when they come on stream.