A broad eleven-arch bridge crossing the River Bride at Tallow is not the kind of structure that draws much attention to itself, which is partly what makes its quiet history worth pausing over. The bridge carries two lanes of traffic and was built as a single unit rather than extended or altered piecemeal over time, a detail that gives it a certain coherence. Its arches are finished with dressed voussoirs, the carefully shaped wedge stones that form the curved face of each arch, and the upstream, western side is protected by breakwaters designed to deflect the force of the current.

The Bride flows west to east through this part of County Waterford, and the crossing at Tallow has been significant for centuries. A history of the county published in 1824 by the Reverend R. H. Ryland credits Richard Boyle, the first Earl of Cork, with having built two bridges over the Bride, one of which stood at Tallow. Boyle was one of the most powerful figures in early seventeenth-century Ireland, an ambitious planter who accumulated enormous wealth and influence across Munster. A map produced by Bateman in 1716 shows the river bridged at this precise point, and the present structure, which is thought to date from around the beginning of the eighteenth century, is very likely the same bridge recorded on that map. Whether Boyle's earlier crossing was replaced or simply rebuilt in a more substantial form is not entirely clear, but the eleven arches standing today represent one of the older pieces of civic infrastructure still in everyday use in the Waterford area.