QUESTION TIME: Where was the American Plantation in Dundalk?

Where was the American Plantation in Dundalk?
This was a stand of trees that originally stood in Lord Roden's Demesne about where the Ice House Hill Park is today.
It was cut in two by when the railway was constructed in the 1840s. These trees were probably planted by the Second Earl, a son of Lord Limerick, after the Demesne was constructed by the famous landscape gardener Thomas Wright.

What was the ceremony of 'Flogging the Herring'?
This was a procession that was held in many Irish towns from on Holy Saturday, at the end of the Lenten fasting period when a fish was hung from a long pole and carried, while being beaten with rods. This celebration was organised by local butchers to mark the end of 40 days when their trade was greatly affected by the Church ban on eating meat. The 'flogging' was carried out by apprentices and the battered remains flung into a river or lake.
The 'Flogging' ceremony in Dundalk in April 1902 was described by Henry Morris, a teacher at the Dominican Schools, writing in' An Claidheamh Soluis', about a procession from Hill Street to the Big Bridge, where the herring was flung into the Castletown and replaced on the pole by leg lamb which was carried in triumph to the Market Square.

What in old Dundalk were the 'First and Second Metals'?
These were the local names for the two iron bridges that carried the old Dundalk-Greenore Railway line after it left the Quays on the way to Bellurgan.
The 'First', officially called the Castletown Viaduct, crossed the Estuary just to the east of the Tain Bridge and curved for a distance of about 300 yards to the North Marsh. The 'Second' was about a mile further on and crossing Bellurgan Estuary in a straight line of about 200 yards.
The bridges were constructed by the Gandon Foundry of Drogheda in 1872-73. Both were demolished in 1952 after the final train ran on the night of December 31. 1951.

Where is the Coffin Bridge?
This is the stone bridge over the Castletown River at Tateera. It is suggested that it the bridge, now called Bellew's Bridge, was known locally because the parapet was used to rest coffins on when being carried to the nearby Bridge-a-crin Church.
There is also a tradition that the coffin of a notorious informer in the 1798 period 'Butchy' Kirk, was thrown into the river at this point by an angry mob but other accounts say that this incident happened elsewhere, along the River Fane.