It measures just under a metre in length and not much more than forty centimetres across, but it is not merely a piece of old stone pressed into service as infill. It is a cloister base, a shaped architectural element that once formed part of the covered walkway surrounding the courtyard of the town's Franciscan friary, a building now reduced to ruins a short distance away. The bridge itself connects those ruins to St. Cronán's Roman Catholic church, meaning that a fragment of medieval monastic architecture quietly bridges, in both senses, two phases of religious life in the same town.

The friary is not the only source of displaced stonework in Roscrea. A collection of fragments formerly kept in the gardens of Birchgrove House, east of the town, is now on display in Damer House. Among these are pieces of window tracery, the decorative stonework that fills the upper portion of a Gothic window opening, taken from the east window of the Franciscan friary, along with a second cloister base. A carved fragment bearing a Romanesque chevron design, the zigzag ornamental motif characteristic of twelfth-century ecclesiastical carving, is thought to originate from the much older St. Cronán's Romanesque church nearby. Most intriguingly, a pointed doorway also formerly held at Birchgrove was traditionally associated with the Woman's Church at Monaincha, an early medieval island site in a bog a few kilometres outside the town.

Taken together, these pieces sketch out something of the layered ecclesiastical history of Roscrea and its surroundings, with stonework from different centuries and different religious communities ending up gathered in private gardens, repositioned in public buildings, or quietly embedded in everyday infrastructure. The cloister base on the Moneen bridge is perhaps the most unassuming of the group, but it is also the most accessible, sitting in plain view for anyone who knows to look for it on the parapet.