The bridge itself is modest, a slightly depressed hump-backed structure just 22 metres long and less than three metres wide, but its construction carries details worth pausing over. Its three arches are segmental-headed, and the voussoirs, the wedge-shaped stones that lock an arch together, are set on edge and crudely cut, suggesting the work of practical builders rather than specialist masons. Two pointed cutwaters project from the NE side of the piers; these angled projections were designed to split the current and reduce pressure on the structure. Aligned roughly NW-SE, the bridge sits to the south-east of the island it serves.

The complex it was built to reach is Clare Castle, a hall-house and fortified house arrangement on the island. A hall-house was a form of defended domestic building common in medieval Ireland, essentially a first-floor hall raised above a ground-floor storage or service level, offering both comfort and security. The broader complex here is thought to date to the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, and the bridge is considered likely contemporary with it, meaning it was probably constructed as an integral part of the same project, a deliberate piece of infrastructure designed to make an island stronghold both secure and accessible. The upper portion of the bridge has since collapsed, and the parapets were entirely rebuilt during the 1990s. Notably, there is no evidence of wicker-centring, the temporary timber and wicker framework typically used to support an arch during construction, which raises quiet questions about the techniques employed here.