It is a functional twentieth-century structure, unremarkable to the passing eye, yet it almost certainly sits on the exact spot where, in 1682, a local knight chose to throw a wooden bridge across one of the more turbulent stretches of a midland river.

The reason for the bridge's location is recorded with pleasing directness in the historical sources. Sir Connell Ferral Knight erected it specifically because of the rapidness of the river at this point, at a place then known as Srooher, which is the older form of the placename Shrule. The name itself likely reflects that same quality of the water. No physical trace of Ferral's wooden structure survives above ground, which is hardly surprising given the material and the centuries involved, but the present crossing is thought to occupy the same site, the logic of the river and the terrain having made this the obvious place to bridge the Inny across several generations.