The map, titled 'A Plan of the Camp near Thurles', was the work of John Rocque, the French-born cartographer who produced some of the most detailed and celebrated maps of eighteenth-century Ireland. He marked this spot plainly as 'Cabra Ford', suggesting it was already a well-established and recognisable crossing long before the bridge that now occupies the site was ever laid down.

The ford itself has since been replaced by a three-span stone bridge, most likely built in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. It is a solid, workmanlike structure, built from roughly cut limestone blocks for its parapet and side walls, with cut stone voussoirs forming the curved arches. Voussoirs are the wedge-shaped stones that lock together to carry the weight of an arch, and their presence here points to a builder with some technical confidence, even if the overall impression is functional rather than ornate. The bridge sits where generations of people, animals, and carts once waded through the river, and the continuity of the crossing from ford to masonry span is part of what makes the site worth pausing over.