South Dublin County Council has announced that a €15,000 feasibility study will take place into the restoration of the Farmleigh Bridge, a 19th-century bridge build by the Guinness family, over the Liffey. The project was the second most popular in the Have Your Say participative budgeting campaign recently run by South Dublin County Council. Voters got to select eight winning projects to be funded from a shortlist of 17 and over 2,500 votes were cast. In January, campaigners collected over 2,000 signatures for a petition calling for the bridge, also known as the Silver Bridge, to be restored. It was handed to South Dublin and Fingal county councils, as the bridge spans the Liffey between both administrative areas. According to the petition, the bridge requires maintenance “to bring it back to its original grandeur” and is at risk of collapsing if the rivets in the lattice structure are not replaced. The 52m box truss bridge was commissioned by Edward Cecil Guinness and was most likely constructed by the Engineering Department of Guinness Brewery between 1872 and 1880. It links the south side fields of Waterstown Park in Palmerstown to a tunnel connecting to the Farmleigh estate in the Phoenix Park. Guinness built the bridge to supply electricity for Farmleigh House. It also brought water to the Farmleigh clock tower and provided access to the estate for many of its workers who lived in Palmerstown. Farmleigh Bridge features gates at either end, illustrating the social and class barriers underpinning Victorian society – the bridge was for the exclusive use of the Guinness family and their guests. Workers on the estate coming from Palmerstown had to pass through the Waterstown fields and cross the Liffey via ferry, which operated until the 1940s. The bridge was closed in the 1970s and fell into a state of disrepair. Currently, there is no accessible bridge or other route for walking or cycling between the Anna Livia Bridge in Chapelizod and Lucan Bridge — a distance of nearly 9km with large urban areas both north and south of the river. The motorway Westlink Bridge on the M50 is between those two bridges, but it is illegal to walk or cycle on it and no parallel route was built when the motorway was construction or upgraded. “[The bridge] could serve as an access point for pedestrians to the Phoenix Park from Lucan and Palmerstown residents,” the Rebuild the Silver Bridge group said. “It could also be used as an alternative route as part of the Liffey greenway plan... It would open access to both parks along the Liffey and increase community usage via cycling, walking and running.” Engineers are expected to start work on the feasibility study within the next few weeks.