But underneath that practical patching, if you look carefully at the downstream, northern face, the older structure begins to show itself.

The bridge carries a road on a roughly east-west axis and spans the Slaheny River through two segmental arches, a design in which the arch forms a shallow arc rather than a full semicircle, a common approach in Irish bridge-building that keeps the profile low and suits rivers prone to flooding. The two arches are divided by a central pier that sits directly on a natural rock outcrop in the riverbed, a practical piece of engineering that uses the geology of the site rather than fighting it. On the upstream, southern side, the concrete reinforcement has all but obliterated the original stonework. The northern face is more revealing: a few roughly shaped voussoirs, the wedge-cut stones that lock an arch together, remain visible around the smaller western arch, and a pair of buttresses in rough ashlar flank the main arch. Ashlar refers to stone that has been cut and dressed to a relatively flat face, though here the finish is uneven, suggesting work that was functional rather than decorative. The overall width of the bridge is approximately 4.4 metres.