Masonry arch bridges remain a vital part of the infrastructure system worldwide. In the UK alone, approximately 40,000 highway bridges and over 25,000 railway spans are of masonry arch construction. Weathering and climate change have significantly accelerated the material degradation, while increasing traffic loads – in terms of both freight-weight and speed - introduced considerable uncertainty in the long-term performance of these infrastructure assets. This paper discusses the development of a full-scale masonry arch bridge laboratory testing programme. The bridge contained an arch barrel with a header bond pattern, abutments, spandrel walls, and was backfilled with compacted graded limestone. To simulate operational conditions, incremental high-cycle fatigue loads were applied to the top of the backfill using five hydraulic actuators. Starting with an initial load of 50 kN at 1 Hz at the longitudinal centerline, the load was increased by 20 kN after every two days of testing, culminating at 190 kN after seven increments. Subsequently, the actuators were repositioned to off-center locations near the north-side spandrel wall, and the above incremental loads were applied again. In total, the bridge was subjected to over 13.8 million loading cycles. This paper discussed the material characterization and visual-observed crack propagation after each fatigue loading test.