Ardmaddy Jetties

NM 783 155. On the E shore of Ardmaddy Bay, about 900 m SSW of the castle, there are two stone built jetties. One of these may be the pier known to have been built in 1748 by the company that worked the nearby marble quarry (No. 355), and both are shown in an estate survey of 1787 (SRO, RHO 975/1), but they have been greatly altered. In the cliff-face immediately to the SE there is a rectangular opening enlarged by quarrying, measuring 8'5 min width by I I '7 m in length, within which a boat-house was constructed c. 1790. As shown in an architect's drawing of that period (SRO, GD 112/20/5), it comprised a stone screen-wall in a simplified Gothic Revival style, behind which four pairs of timber columns supported tie-beam trusses carrying a slated roof. Only the screen-wall now survives (PI. 89A); it is constructed of rubble masonry ornamented with courses of projecting stones, and has a height of 5' 5 m. At the centre there is an opening 4'9 m in height and having an arch-pointed head, which originally contained a fixed wooden tympanum and double doors. The boat-house was lit by two slit-windows, splayed internally and intersected externally by mock cross-lights giving them the form of Greek crosses.

RCAHMS 1975, visited May 1970.