The southern arch, on the Dublin side, spans four metres; the northern arch, on the Meath side, measures only three and a half. Stand on the bridge and you are, in effect, standing on a county boundary that has been in place since the Norman reorganisation of Irish territory, with the river Delvin running beneath you as the dividing line between the two jurisdictions. The parapet on the upstream side rises 2.1 metres above road level, considerably higher than structural necessity alone would demand, which suggests it was designed with some awareness of defence, or at least of the vulnerability that comes with being a crossing point on a contested boundary.

The bridge dates stylistically to the 13th century, a period when Anglo-Norman lords were consolidating their hold on the Irish landscape and bridge-building was both a practical and a political act. It sits on what was once the road connecting Balscaddan to Gormanstown, a route old enough to appear on the Down Survey maps of 1655 to 1656, the ambitious land survey carried out under William Petty following the Cromwellian confiscations. The structure was not built in a single campaign. According to O'Keeffe and Simington, the original upstream section accounts for more than half the total width of the bridge, with two subsequent enlargements added progressively, each narrower than the last. The joints between these phases are of the butt type, meaning the stones of the additions were simply laid against the earlier masonry rather than interlocked with it. The central cutwater, a projecting wedge of stonework on the upstream face designed to divide the current and reduce pressure on the pier, sits between arches whose pier is 2.3 metres thick. Meath County Council carried out restoration work on the bridge around 1994.

The bridge is not prominently signposted, and reaching it means following the old road between Balscaddan and Gormanstown rather than the more modern routes in the area. Vegetation has grown substantially around the cutwater on both sides of the road, largely obscuring it from view, so the structural detail that rewards a closer look requires some patience and a willingness to peer through the growth. The butt joints between the different building phases are most legible from the downstream side, where the successive narrowings of the bridge are easier to read in the stonework. The river itself is modest in scale, but the combination of the high defensive parapet, the mismatched arches, and the quiet county boundary running beneath makes this a genuinely layered piece of infrastructure.