Voussoirs are the wedge-shaped stones used to form an arch, and their presence here, sealed off and no longer functional, suggests that an earlier crossing survives in part within the fabric of the present structure.

The site has a long documentary history. A bridge at this crossing appears on the Down Survey map of Abbeyshrule barony, produced between 1655 and 1656, making it one of the earlier recorded river crossings in County Longford. By 1682, a stone bridge here was described as having been lately built by one Robert Choppin, an esquire who was also credited with constructing a bridge at nearby Newcastle. Whether the current structure replaced Choppin's entirely or absorbed elements of it is unclear, but the blocked arch in the eastern face is a candidate for that earlier phase. The bridge as it stands today dates from the mid-nineteenth century, with two arches and cut-stone voussoirs rising from a central pier, a relatively modest but well-made crossing. Around 275 metres to the south-southwest lies the site of the Cistercian monastery at Abbeyshrule, a medieval religious house whose presence shaped this part of the Inny valley long before any of the surviving stonework was laid.