Devonshire Bridge

Single-arch dressed stone hump back road bridge over canal, c.1800, with dressed stone voussoirs, keystone, cut-stone stringcourse and coursed stone parapet walls. Coursed dressed stone walls to abutments. Cut-stone advanced piers. Cut-stone stringcourse. Coursed dressed stone parapet walls. Rubble stone walls to wings. Single round arch. Dressed stone voussoirs with keystone. Rubble stone soffits with traces of render over. Sited spanning Grand Canal with tow path to east and grass banks to canal.

Devonshire Bridge is a fine stone bridge of unusual height that forms an imposing feature on the Grand Canal and is one of a group of bridges on the section of that canal that passes through County Kildare. The construction of the arch that has retained its original shape is of technical and engineering merit. The bridge exhibits good quality stone masonry and fine, crisp joints - the use of such high quality dressed stone masonry in the construction is slightly unusual for canal bridges and elevates this model amongst its counterparts. The bridge is of considerable historical and social significance as a reminder of the canal network development in Ireland, which brought about many technical advances and encouraged the development of commercial activity in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries.