Towns go with the flow

A RIVER flowing through a town should, you might expect, be seen as an advantage — not only for its beauty and environmental value, but also for very practical reasons.

Many Irish towns and villages, however, have tended to turn their backs to rivers.

Others took the opposite approach and were actually designed around rivers, which dictated the lay-out of streets and malls. The River Bandon, for instance, would have strongly influenced the development of the eponymous plantation town, in Co Cork, in the 17th century.