[4] Island Bridge and the surrounding area (often known as Islandbridge)[5] are so named because of the island formed here by the creation of a mill race towards the right bank while the main current flows to the left.

The River Camac emerges from a tunnel further downstream towards Dublin Heuston railway station.

[6][7] It was also a fording point, on the River Liffey, since at least the early medieval period.

[8] In 1577, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, while Sir Henry Sidney was Lord Deputy of Ireland, an arched stone bridge was built here to replace an earlier structure nearby at Kilmainham.

The structure is a single 32-metre span ashlar masonry elliptical arch bridge[10] and was originally named Sarah's Bridge after Sarah Fane, Countess of Westmorland, wife of the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who laid the first stone on 22 June 1791.