Cheekpoint

Cheekpoint (Irish: Pointe na Síge) is a village set on the confluence of the River Suir and the River Barrow. Lying beneath the 150 metre high Minaun Hill (mountain meadow by a river) the village has panoramic views of Waterford Harbour, the 2131 ft. Barrow Bridge, which was once the longest bridge in Ireland, and Great Island Power Station now owned by Scottish Southern Energy SSE plc who purchased it from Endesa in 2012. The village is also surrounded by the Malting Woods which were planted by Cornelius Bolton.

The Irish name for Cheekpoint is "Pointe na Síge", or perhaps "Pointe na Sí" (in English, Point of the Fairies). It is also claimed to mean Point of the Streak,. Now it is thought that the name comes from a rock called Carraig na Síge out on the river near the low water mark which shows a trail of foam or streak with the ebbing tide.

Subsequently it was called Bolton but this name is now no longer used and the original is the only one recognised. Before the building of the pier at Dunmore East, Cheekpoint was a thriving village, being the station at which the mail packets from England for Waterford stopped. In addition there were cotton, rope, and hosiery factories which disappeared when the mail packet station was transferred to Dunmore East on July 1, 1818.

Cheekpoint and the lands which surrounded it were owned of the Aylward family from Bristol, who had been granted 7000 acres of pastureland by King Henry II in 1177. They held it until Oliver Cromwell dispossessed them in 1649 when they refused to renounce Catholicism. Cromwell then gave the property to one of his officers, a Captain William Bolton. In 1783 Cornelius Bolton (1751–1829) built Faithlegg House after he had inherited the Faithlegg Estate from his father in 1779.

Cornelius Bolton was a very progressive landlord and he was very interested in helping his tenants to progress. He built the pier at the nearby village of Cheekpoint and then he built a textile factory, a rope factory and a hotel. However these enterprises failed and he went bankrupt in 1819. This was largely due to the mail packet station to Milford Haven in Wales being transferred to Dunmore East in 1818.

...
Wikipedia