At just 3.4 metres wide and oriented east to west, it was never built for heavy traffic, and today it functions as a pedestrian crossing on a walking route through the park, which may be close to its original purpose.

The bridge is constructed of random rubble, meaning the stonework is laid without uniform courses, and its two arches are semicircular, formed with roughly shaped voussoirs, the wedge-cut stones that distribute the load around an arch. A low pointed cutwater on the upstream face of the central pier helps deflect the current, and there is a shallow rectangular projection on the downstream side, with buttresses added at each bank on the upstream side for further stability. What gives the structure an unusual depth of history is its appearance on an estate map of the Kenmare estate dated 1725, where it is identified by name as Old Ware Bridge. The word "old" in that name, applied to a bridge already considered old in the early eighteenth century, suggests the crossing may predate the map by a considerable margin, though by how much is difficult to say.

Walkers on the route through this part of Killarney National Park will pass directly over it. The degraded surface and missing parapets make its age legible in a way that a restored bridge would not, and the cutwater and buttresses, slightly awkward looking from above, become more intelligible when seen from the water level of the channel itself.