A reredos is the decorative screen or facing that rises behind an altar, and the Corinthian order, with its elaborate acanthus-leaf capitals, is among the most ornate of the classical architectural styles. Finding one described as superb in a modest rural Cork church is the sort of quiet anomaly that rewards the curious.

The church dates from the 1830s and is built to a T-plan barn-church layout, a form common to Irish churches of the post-Penal era, when congregations were finally free to build more permanent and formal places of worship. The plan pairs a wide nave with transepts projecting to either side, giving the interior a broad, gathered feel without the elongated processional axis of older Gothic forms. The exterior presents a well-composed classical facade in ashlar limestone, a dressed and precisely cut stone that gives the front elevation its clean, ordered character. The combination of a restrained classical front and an elaborately ornamented interior feature like the Corinthian reredos speaks to the ambitions of a congregation and a period keen to assert a certain dignity in its public architecture.