& G: R: PAIN / ARCHts / 1823." It is an unusually direct signature for a building, the architects quite literally leaving their mark on a church that still sits at the centre of its graveyard, its spired tower visible at the western end.

The Pain brothers, James and George Richard Pain, were among the most prolific architects working in early nineteenth-century Ireland. Trained under the celebrated John Nash in England, they settled in Cork and left a considerable mark on the province's ecclesiastical and domestic architecture. St. Mary's was designed in the neo-Gothic style, a mode of building that was sweeping across Ireland and Britain at the time, reviving pointed arches, lancet windows, and slender spires as a self-conscious return to medieval forms. The church follows a traditional layout of nave and chancel, with the tower anchoring the west end. A north transept was added in 1835, extending the original plan by twelve years and suggesting a congregation that had grown since the building first opened.