It was a practical, hybrid construction, part masonry, part timber, part woven material, holding together a route between county Roscommon and county Leitrim across one of Ireland's most significant rivers.

The bridge appears on an eighteenth-century Longfield map held at the National Library of Ireland and again on the 1837 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, on both occasions noted alongside a weir. That combination, bridge and weir together, was common enough on Irish rivers where the management of water flow and the need for a crossing went hand in hand. The wicker and gravel surface would have provided grip and some degree of weather resistance over the oak planking, though the whole arrangement must have required regular upkeep. By 1896, the structure had been replaced by a five-arch masonry bridge built approximately 170 metres downstream, and the older crossing disappeared from the landscape, surviving only in cartographic records.