One entry concerns a bridge that once crossed the river near Charles Street, served the city for over two centuries, and then simply ceased to exist, leaving no replacement and remarkably little trace.

The story begins in 1682, when a timber bridge was put up at this location to give traders and customers access to Ormond market on the north quays. It was a functional rather than grand structure, and it lasted only two years before being rebuilt in stone in 1684. That second bridge was a more substantial affair, comprising five spans achieved through four stone arches and a timber drawbridge, the latter allowing river traffic to pass when needed. The drawbridge element was a common feature of urban crossings at the time, since the Liffey was still a working waterway and navigation rights had to be respected. According to John De Courcey's 1996 study of the river, this was the arrangement that carried people back and forth for the better part of two and a half centuries. Then, in 1902, the bridge collapsed. No replacement was ever built.

Because the bridge no longer exists, there is nothing physical to visit in the conventional sense. What remains is the absence itself, which is perhaps the more interesting thing. The stretch of quay near Charles Street on the north side of the river is where the crossing once stood, and a walk along the Liffey here, comparing what was once a bridged point with the unbroken water now, gives a small but concrete sense of how the city's infrastructure has shifted and been selectively forgotten. The collapse in 1902 came during a period of considerable change in Dublin's quayside fabric, and the decision not to rebuild suggests that patterns of movement had already begun to reorganise around other crossings. Visitors interested in the archaeology of urban space will find more here in the thinking than in the looking.