Butt Bridge

The first bridge named ‘Butt Bridge’ was designed by the magnificently-named Bindon Blood Stoney, assistant engineer to the Port and Docks Board,¹ and it took a little over two years to build, work having begun in May 1877.²

It was designed to swivel open to allow river traffic travel up the river, as far as Carlisle (O’Connell) Bridge.

The bridge was opened to traffic and pedestrians, a little haphazardly according to the Weekly Freeman, on 26 August 1879.³ That same report mentions naming the bridge for Isaac Butt,⁴ as had an article a few weeks previously.⁵

There was also a suggestion that the bridge be named for Charles William Beresford, hero of the Zulu Wars.⁶

Known as the Swivel Bridge, it wasn’t formally named until 1884. In May that year there was a proposal that it be called ‘Tara Bridge’, but that was withdrawn.⁷

At the same meeting of the Corporation it was proposed that ‘the bridge leading from the end of Tara Street to Custom House quay be called Butt Bridge’, and this was adopted.⁸

The swivel bridge was replaced by the present bridge in 1932.

1. Patrick Long, ‘Stoney, Bindon Blood’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography (https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.008338.v1) (accessed 18 March 2025) ↩︎
2. ’The new swivel bridge across the Liffey’, Irish Times, 22 August 1879. ↩︎
3. Weekly Freeman and Irish Agriculturist, 30 August 1879 ↩︎
4. Philip Bull, ‘Butt, Isaac’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography (https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.001311.v1) (accessed 19 March 2025). ↩︎
5. ‘Proposed Butt Testimonial’, Freeman’s Journal, 18 August 1879. ↩︎
6. Daily Express, 27 August 1879. ↩︎
7. Minutes 1884/288. ↩︎
8. Minutes 1884/289. ↩︎