Bray once had a unique tourist attraction, an aerial chairlift that whisked passengers up to the Eagle’s Nest on the heights of Bray Head, but it’s the best part of 50 years since it last functioned.
The chairlift was opened in April 1952. It was the brainchild of Eamonn Quinn, father of former senator and Superquinn boss Feargal Quinn. After the second World War, Eamonn Quinn had opened the Red Island holiday camp at Skerries in north Co Dublin, which became immensely popular during the 1950s. He also purchased two sites in Bray, one a field at the bottom of Bray Head, the other, the Eagle's Nest restaurant and ballroom halfway up Bray Head, about 150 metres above sea level. The Eagle's Nest had been opened in 1932.
Quinn was then faced with the problem of getting customers up to the Eagle’s Nest; the incline was too steep to walk up. Until then, the main transport had been the Bray Head Express, a horse-drawn cart, which cost six pence per person.
Quinn was inspired by the many ski-lifts he saw in Switzerland. A total of seven steel pylons, painted yellow, were built on the northern slopes of Bray Head. Steel wires ran from pylon to pylon and from those wires hung the passenger gondolas. The new aerial chairlift could carry 300 passengers an hour in each direction, up and down Bray Head.
The new device soon proved its popularity, with queues forming at the foot of Bray Head as early as 10am during the summer months
But as Feargal Quinn remembers, since the gondolas were open to the elements, the chairlift was very weather dependent, including the wind. He also says it cost one shilling and sixpence to go up and a shilling to come down.
He and his sister Eilagh were regular visitors to the attraction in the 1950s.
The new device soon proved its popularity, with queues forming at the foot of Bray Head as early as 10am during the summer months; many people went up to the Eagle’ s Nest for morning coffee, while others went to the viewing point on Bray Head that had been built for Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee in 1887.
The evening dances at the Eagle’s Nest were always popular, even though the dancers, clad in all their finery, had to make the ascent on the chairlift.
During the peak tourist season, Eamonn Quinn also organised trips to the chairlift for people who were spending a holiday at Red Island. Those weekly excursions attracted up to 100 people at a time.
There have been discussions from time to time about whether the chairlift should be reinstated. But those discussions have never gone any further
In 1970, I met my wife- to- be, Bernadette Quinn, and one of the first excursions we did was the ascent of Bray Head on the aerial chairlift.
Admittedly, the views were spectacular, but doing the trip in one of the open gondolas was slightly scary, even more so because it was all too evident the chairlift was coming to the end of its days. It closed down soon afterwards.
In recent years, says David Forde, the district administrator in Bray municipal district, there have been discussions from time to time about whether the chairlift should be reinstated. But those discussions have never gone any further and he says that if there were to be a new chairlift, it would have to be privately operated.
At least the original route of the chairlift is still clear of any developments, and David Forde suggests that if the chairlift was ever reinstated, it could go even higher, to the cross on the top of Bray Head, built in 1950.
In the late 1960s, there were plans to build a similar structure in the Devil's Punch Bowl area near Killarney, while in the 1990s, there was much talk of a cablecar system linking Inisbiggle to Achill island in Co Mayo, but neither of those schemes ever came to anything.
Despite those setbacks, one aerial cablecar system is still going strong, linking the West Cork mainland to Dursey Island, opened in 1969.
I can testify from our own experiences that swinging high above the sound that separates Dursey Island from the mainland is pretty exhilarating! The service is run by Cork County Council and runs daily, with a 30-minute break for lunch. These days, there's a coffee dock in summer beside the cable-car landing area, essential because Dursey has no pubs, restaurants or shops.
Perhaps one of these fine days, Bray will get a modern cable car system to emulate the one in west Cork, and once more, Bray Head will become a top tourism attraction.