What is the Kilkenny Main Drainage tunnel?

ngcxt6

I was reading some wiki articles and stuff on kilkenny history, and one thing lead to another and I ended up on this wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnels_in_Ireland

If you scroll down to the bottom under "drainage" it lists the "kilkenny main drainage tunnel".

I've never heard of this before, when was it built and what is it? Is it big or is it just like a series of pipes?

Rantan

its probably just a large diameter storm water or sewer main.

I know the flood relief scheme was re-classified from a "Flood relief Scheme" to a "Main drainage scheme" during construction.

From what I know there is nothing too big in the ground in KK certainly nothing more than 1 - 1.2m diam I think...- I might be wrong?

the main sewer leads down along the Nore to the purcells inch treatment plant so it could be that

SpaceTime

Most likely an interceptor sewer of some sort that collects up old drains that ran into the river.

KK4SAM

There was a tunnel dug by hand from the Sewage Pumping station in the Market Yard toward the Savoy in the 80s/90s.

ngcxt6

google brought up this.

http://www.ranell.org/projects.htm

Realignment and Guiding of Tunnel Boring Machine for Kilkenny Main Drainage Heading.

Sky King

There's a river tunneled under John street down through The Garden Centre (or that area) and under the old Kilkenny College down to the Nore afaik maybe that's it

SpaceTime

There's a surprising number of underground waterways around, particularly in Cork and Dublin.

If you're ever in Cork City early enough that it's still quiet, you can actually hear rivers flowing under some of the streets in the culverts. These are extremely old but it was interesting to see pics of them from the main drainage work done here about a decade or so ago.

http://corkorigins.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/culvert.jpg

These run under streets in Cork. They're not sewers or drains. They're actually rivers that were enclosed when the lands were reclaimed to create streets.

I'm sure Kilkenny has some interesting underground hidden structures too, given the age of the city.

catbear

I believe when the Ormonde car park was being built they had to drive down foundations a lot deeper than planned as there were layers of alluvial silt beneath the street surface, probably natural culverts.

SpaceTime

One issue that tends to come up, maybe not so much in Kilkenny as you're inland, but places built in river deltas or on marshy land like Cork and parts of Dublin and Galway is that big foundations are dug out with 2-story basements. These actually have impacts on how water drains away as they remove paces for it to soak up.

In Cork in particular there are big question marks over how certain developments might impact how water flows under the city during tidal surges. Cork is literally about as close to an Irish Amsterdam as you'll ever get. We can't even put metal infrastructure directly into in the ground as it rusts due to brine (salt water) being always present in the city centre! Some lampposts and old iron pipes have literally just dissolved and foundation materials need to be 100% sea-water proof.

In general though there's a lot going on under our towns and cities that many of us are totally unaware of.

Does Kilkenny have any medieval era tunnels connecting the castle?
Dublin has quite a few like Christchruch is linked underground etc ...

Threadhead

There's a lot of underground passages and tunnels in the city. I'd love to see an in depth study carried out and photographs taken. There's a large tunnel that goes from the city all the way out to the Dunmore Caves which was an old escape route (there's a ghost story attached to that one). There's a tunnel that goes from under the Metropole to under the Playwright. There's one from the Design Centre to the Castle. Those are the main ones I've heard of off the top of my head.

Most significantly in recent years there's a tunnel from just underneath Morrisons which goes right underneath the Left Bank which the owner applied for planning permission a few years back to connect both buildings but it was turned down.

cargo

Threadhead wrote: »

Most significantly in recent years there's a tunnel from just underneath Morrisons which goes right underneath the Left Bank which the owner applied for planning permission a few years back to connect both buildings but it was turned down.

On the linking of those 2 buildings, I though the owner was looking to link those overhead across the road or am I mistaken? I do remember something about linking the 2 though.

Threadhead

There was supposed to be a roof area built onto the Left Bank alright but I don't know what came of that.

The plan at the time was to link both venues by a passage that runs underneath the Parade.