Overview
Most bridges are built to be crossed. This one carried services. In the later 19th century the Guinness brewery’s engineers put a single cast-iron span across the River Liffey in the Strawberry Beds to carry services up to Farmleigh, the Guinness family’s estate. It is known locally as the Silver Bridge, and also as the Guinness, Strawberry Beds or Lord Iveagh’s Bridge. Dublin.ie calls it “Dublin’s forgotten bridge”, and that is about right: a ghostly, deckless Victorian structure in a quiet spot.
You cannot go on it. The deck is gone, and there is no public crossing. What you can do is look at it from a safe public spot, a short curiosity best folded into a Strawberry Beds outing, not a destination in its own right. Keep the narrow road clear.
The Guinness bridge
Before the bridge there was a ford here, last recorded in 1773, and then ferries. An 1836 Ordnance Survey map shows two crossings on this stretch, one of them probably a private Guinness ferry. The bridge went up after 1872, when Edward Cecil Guinness, great-grandson of Arthur Guinness and later Lord Iveagh, bought Farmleigh, and before 1890, when the first known photograph of it exists.
Iveagh was described in his day as “an electricity loving peer”, and he and his Paris-raised wife Adelaide were known for a brilliantly lit house and glittering parties. The bridge was at first for the family only, and the estate workers were later let cross. It stayed in use until the deck was taken up and the bridge was closed in the 1970s, after which it was left to rust.
What’s there now
The bridge is a single-span cast-iron box truss sitting on two stone abutments faced with cut limestone and trimmed with buttresses and round-headed arches. Fingal County Council’s conservation report records work on the structure without reinstating the deck. So it has been saved, and it still cannot be walked.
South Dublin County Council’s 2026 update explains what remains to be done, and whether the bridge ever reopens is an open question. For now there is no date.
Seeing it
Look from a safe public spot, and do not stand in the narrow road. Early or late in the day, low light picks out the rivets and the limestone. That is genuinely the whole visit.
Practical information
- Access: Closed to the public. There is no deck and no crossing.
- Cost: Free to look.
- Getting there: Check your route and the current transport options before you travel. Keep the narrow road clear if you park.
- Farmleigh: To visit Farmleigh House and its estate, use the entrance through Phoenix Park. The bridge does not link the Strawberry Beds to the estate for visitors, and there is no direct walk across it.