This one, spanning the Kings River just north of the village of Kells in County Kilkenny, is quietly two things at once, and the difference is written into its stonework if you know where to look. Roughly sixty metres of limestone runs NNE-SSW across the water, and built into it are two distinct phases of construction separated by about fifty years, each with its own approach to the arch, the keystone, and the cut of the stone.

The older portion, dated to around 1725, sits to the west and carries eight round-headed arches along with a further flood arch to the south, the kind of additional opening left to handle high water rather than normal flow. The voussoirs, the wedge-shaped stones that lock an arch together, are roughly cut in this earlier section but consistent in size, suggesting competent if unrefined work. Around 1775 the bridge was widened, and the later addition is noticeably more refined: three large elliptical-headed arches were laid over the central section of the original, their voussoirs well dressed and finished with a projecting keystone. Where the two outer arches of the later phase meet the original structure, they sit flush with it rather than overlapping, which is part of what makes the join legible even now. Cutwaters, the pointed or angled projections built between arches to divide the current and reduce pressure on the piers, survive on the upstream side up to the springing level of the arches, and three substantial buttresses shore up the southern end within the adjacent field. The bridge's history may go back further still: a bridge appears at precisely this location on the Down Survey barony map of Kells, produced between 1655 and 1656, and it is possible that some of the masonry in the earlier phase was carried over from whatever structure stood here in the seventeenth century. Just sixty metres or so to the south lies a motte and bailey, the earthwork remains of an early medieval or Norman fortified site, a reminder that this crossing of the Kings River has been a place of some strategic importance for a very long time.