The bridge spans the Dinin River and was built to provide access to the Jenkinstown House demesne, but the man who paid for it evidently wanted that fact remembered, and wanted something in return.

The rectangular plaque, carved in raised Roman capitals, was transcribed by Carrigan in 1905 and later translated by Hoyne in 1966. The inscription reads, in full: "Patrick Dowlye erected this bridge at his own expense, AD 1647. Pray for the Eternal Rest for him, for his wife and for his children." The date places the construction during one of the most turbulent periods in Irish history, the year before the decisive campaigns of the Confederate Wars that would reshape land ownership across the country. Whether Dowlye knew what was coming is impossible to say, but there is something quietly urgent in a man building a bridge at his own expense and asking passing strangers, in Latin, to pray for his whole family. The appeal is addressed directly to the traveller, "Viator" in the original, a word borrowed from Roman funerary inscriptions where it was used to catch the eye of anyone walking past a roadside tomb. Dowlye was not buried here, but the convention gave his request a gravity that a plainer notice could not have managed. The stone has remained in the parapet for nearly four centuries, still legible, still addressed to whoever happens to cross.