Where a modern bridge now spans the water, a ford almost certainly preceded it, a shallow passage where people, livestock, and carts once picked their way across on foot and hoof rather than over timber or stone.

The evidence is brief but pointed. The Civil Survey of 1654 to 1656, a meticulous Cromwellian-era document that catalogued land ownership and topographical features across Ireland in the aftermath of the Confederate Wars, records a ford at a place then named Ballyartella. That survey, compiled when much of the country was being assessed for redistribution, noted practical features of the landscape precisely because they mattered to movement and to value. A ford was infrastructure. The fact that one was considered worth naming here suggests it was a recognised crossing point, likely used for generations before the surveyors arrived to write it down. The current bridge at the same location may well sit on, or very close to, the original line of that crossing.