When medieval masons built a stone arch, they needed a temporary framework to support the voussoirs, the wedge-shaped stones that lock an arch into place, while the mortar cured. Often that framework was woven from branches and withies, and here at Rathkeale, faint impressions of exactly that process survive in two of the round arches flanking the river and in the central arch. It is the kind of detail that slips past most people crossing a bridge on an ordinary day.

The crossing has a long and somewhat tangled history. By 1655 it was recorded as being in the possession of one M. Harbart, who also owned Rathkeale Castle, suggesting the bridge was already a significant piece of local infrastructure well before that date. By the time Samuel Lewis was compiling his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland in 1837, he noted it was in a dilapidated and dangerous state, which implies that whatever medieval fabric existed had been under stress for some time. The bridge as it largely stands today is described by the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage as a five-arch humpback road bridge originally built around 1747, though it incorporates that earlier fabric. The original width of the structure was 4.7 metres, later widened to 7.8 metres, and it is built throughout of rubble limestone, with segmental arches carrying cut stone voussoirs and V-shaped cutwaters, the pointed projections on the piers that deflect the current and reduce pressure on the structure.

Rathkeale is on the main road between Limerick city and Newcastle West, so the bridge is easy enough to reach and sits within the town itself. The wicker-work impressions mentioned in the Urban Survey of Limerick are subtle rather than dramatic, and worth examining from the riverbank rather than from the road surface above. Low water levels in late summer or early autumn give the clearest view of the arches and their detailing. The bridge is a working road crossing, so any close inspection is best done from the bank on foot.