On the Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1840, a spot along the River Nier in County Waterford is labelled with quiet finality: 'Site of Old Bridge'. No bridge stands there. No pier, no abutment, no worn stone. The label is the only evidence that this crossing ever mattered, and for a stretch of road that was once the main route between Clonmel and Dungarvan, that is a rather deflating epitaph.

The bridge was built in the early seventeenth century by Sir Richard Boyle, the energetic and often controversial English settler who accumulated vast landholdings across Munster and eventually became the first Earl of Cork. He chose the lowest practicable crossing point on the east-west stretch of the Nier, which made practical sense; rivers are easier to bridge where they are still narrow and not yet braided by floodplain. The structure did not last. It was washed away not long after construction, rebuilt, and then rendered redundant altogether in 1798, when a new road was driven through Ballymacarbry to give better access to the copper mines being worked in the area. Once the traffic moved, the bridge lost its purpose, and the river eventually claimed whatever remained. By the time the Ordnance Survey came through to map the townland of Castlequarter, there was nothing left to draw, only a memory precise enough to name.