The royal cipher, invoking George IV, places the bridge firmly in the period of state-funded infrastructure that followed the Napoleonic Wars, when improving road and bridge networks across Ireland became a matter of both economic and political urgency. That a single engineer's name should be so plainly recorded in the stonework is itself unusual, a piece of professional pride built into the fabric of the structure.

The engineer named is Richard Griffith, better known to Irish history as the man behind the General Valuation of Ireland, the mid-nineteenth-century land survey that became known as Griffith's Valuation. In 1824, however, he was working in his capacity as engineer to the Board of Works in Munster, overseeing road improvements across the region. The bridge he produced here is a considered piece of civil engineering: two large elliptical arches, each spanning roughly eight to ten metres, built from coursed ashlar sandstone with limestone detailing. Elliptical arches were favoured in bridge construction of this period because they allowed a flatter, more road-friendly profile while still distributing load efficiently. Bluntly pointed cutwaters, the projecting wedge-shaped piers that divide the current and protect the bridge's foundations from flood debris, project from both sides. The parapet wall overhangs slightly on the outer faces, and the piered abutments at either end are capped in limestone, each cap carrying a small central hole whose purpose is not recorded but which may have served a practical function during construction or maintenance.