The bridge spans the Owengarriff River within Muckross Demesne, one of the great landed estates on the edge of Killarney's lake system, and it is ornate in ways that a purely functional crossing would never need to be. The downstream face is carefully finished, with shaped voussoirs, the wedge-shaped stones that form an arch, arranged with projecting stones tracing the line of the arch above them. The upstream face is rougher, more workmanlike, as if the builders understood which side the world would admire.

The bridge carries an estate road and is built of random rubble sandstone, though the detailing elevates it well beyond simple utility. Its principal arch is a four-centred form, a flattened Gothic shape that was common in Irish estate architecture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, spanning 6.6 metres across the river. A second, taller four-centred arch with a span of 3.2 metres sits on the northern bank. Along the parapet walls, three-sided projections rise up to form refuges, small recesses where a person on foot could step aside to let a horse or carriage pass. There are four of these on the downstream side, each with a pyramidal buttress, and three plainer ones on the upstream face. The initials "HAH" on the 1801 plaque most likely refer to a member of the Herbert family, who held Muckross at that time, though the precise individual behind those letters remains a small open question that the stonework itself does not resolve.