Overview
The Ha’penny Bridge is a single cast-iron arch, 43m long and just 3.66m wide, thrown across the River Liffey between Ormond Quay Lower on the north side and Wellington Quay on the south. It opened in 1816 as Dublin’s first pedestrian crossing over the river, and it is still doing that job: roughly 30,000 people cross it every day, against about 450 a day when it was new. If you want it to yourself, come early on a weekday morning – by lunchtime it is one of the busiest footbridges in the city.
Where the name comes from
Before the bridge there was a ferry, and when the crossing opened its toll was set at a halfpenny not to pay off the ironwork but simply to match what the ferrymen had charged. Turnstiles stood at each end to collect it. The fee crept up to a penny-ha’penny for a while before the toll was dropped altogether in 1919, and by then the nickname had long since stuck.
The bridge has had grander official names. It went up as Wellington Bridge, after the Duke, and was formally renamed the Liffey Bridge in 1922 after the Free State was established. Nobody calls it either of those.
The iron itself came from the Coalbrookdale foundry in Shropshire, cast, the story goes, from ore mined at Sliabh an Iarainn in County Leitrim. It was shipped to Dublin in eighteen sections and bolted together under the eye of a foreman named John Windsor.
The 2001 restoration and the love locks
A major restoration in 2001 cost €1.25 million and, unusually for a job of that size, kept more than 85 per cent of the original railwork – over a thousand individual pieces were repaired in Northern Ireland and returned to the bridge, which reopened that December. The work won a Europa Nostra cultural heritage award in 2003.
Not long after, the padlocks arrived. Couples began clipping ‘love locks’ to the railings, and by 2013 Dublin City Council was cutting off more than 300kg of them at a time because of the strain on the ironwork. Signs now discourage the habit and the locks are cleared regularly. If you were planning to leave one, don’t.
Crossing it, and what’s nearby
Crossing takes a minute and rewards a pause in the middle: open views down the quays and, at the right hour, the lamps reflecting off the water. The far end drops you straight into Temple Bar and its pubs and galleries. Within a short walk are Trinity College, Dublin Castle and the free-to-enter Chester Beatty Library beside it, and Grafton Street leading up to St Stephen’s Green. Photographers get the best of the ironwork in early-morning light and the lamps in the blue hour after sunset.
Practical information
- Getting there: Several Dublin Bus routes stop within a minute at Bachelor’s Walk and Aston Quay. The nearest Luas stop is Jervis (Red Line), a five-minute walk, and the nearest DART is Tara Street, about ten minutes. The closest Dublin Bikes stand is on Fownes Street Upper.
- Accessibility: There are steps at both ends and a steep central deck, so the bridge does not suit wheelchairs or prams. For a step-free crossing use the Millennium Bridge, 100–150m upstream.
- Dogs: Welcome on a lead, in line with council rules.
- Toilets: Public toilets are on the Temple Bar side, near the food market.
- Closures: Open around the clock, closed only for occasional maintenance; Dublin City Council can confirm any works.
Look for the original 1816 segments in the lower railings – they are older than almost anything else you will walk over in Dublin.