Moyvally Bridge

Single-arch rubble stone road bridge over canal, c.1810, with ashlar voussoirs, keystone and rubble stone parapet walls. Irregular coursed squared rubble stone walls to abutments. Squared rubble stone curved wing walls. Rubble stone buttresses. Squared rubble stone parapet walls. Single round arch. Ashlar voussoirs with central keystone. Squared ruble stone soffits with remains of render over. Sited spanning Royal Canal with tow path running underneath to west and grass banks to canal. Single-span cut-stone road bridge over railway line, c.1850, with buttressed piers and concrete lintel. Now disused. Cut-stone walls (parapet wall possibly rebuilt using concrete). Single square-headed span with concrete lintel over. Sited spanning former Midland and Great Western Railway line with grass banks to bridge.

Moyvally Bridge is a fine stone bridge that forms an imposing feature on the Royal 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 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 developed commercial activity in the late eighteenth century. The railway bridge is of similar social and historical importance and is a symbol of the railway network development in the county and throughout Ireland in the nineteenth century. The bridge shares many qualities with its canal counterpart, including execution of the span, the quality of stone masonry, and so on. The bridge is one of many that span the section of the Midland and Great Western Railway line that cut through County Kildare. At Moyvally the positioning of the two bridges in close proximity achieves a number of visual and historical effects, the first represented by the slightly undulating line of the parapet walls as the levels of each bridge differ, and the latter represented by the canal bridge that was deemed redundant once the speedier and more efficient railway was developed - in recent years the station at Moyvally has also been deemed redundant and closed with the result that the adjacent railway bridge is, in turn, an historic artefact of a by-gone age.