|
Posted by gt on May 23, 2002 at 21:42:55: In Reply to: Re: River posted by Interested on May 22, 2002 at 16:54:57: I may be wrong in this but here goes ..... As a youngster I was always led to believe that the river was indeed rerouted to it current location from an older route which took it behind the houses on Ellison street and Main street and then down to the Barracks. So the river would have turned up Cavendish lane (or in that general direction) crossed Ellison street and turned behind the Ellison Street house and Main Street house on the East by South East side and then joined up at the Barracks where it still flows today. The topography certainly allows for this and the elevation difference between the Ellison Street gardens and the Mall needs some explanation. This older route obviously predates the 1839 map and I know of no account of it in the description of the Races of Castlebar so I would suggest that any literature pre 1798 would be a good place to begin, military texts in particular usually mention rivers because of their strategic value. I wish I could do this research but I don't live in Castlebar anymore. Another way other than literature reseach would be to drill a small borehole in the back of one of the Ellison Street gardens. Any self respecting Geologist should be able to identify a river bed sequence and distinguish it from any overlying soil. Interesting stuff. Another curious Castlebar conundrum with a geological component is as follows. Lord Lucan played cricket on the Mall as people do again today. The wicket, i.e. the grass area between the stumps was often created using a mixture of marl, soil and sand. If this was done on the Mall in Lord Lucans time somewhere below the green grass lies that curious mixture, a series of small 18inch deep holes could locate this and then the people today could play on the exact wicket that Lord Lucan played on. A cricket expert could probably advise as to whether it was likely that Lord Lucan would have created a wicket in the manner I describe above, any cricket experts out there?
|