That original purpose is still legible in the building's bones, even if centuries of alteration have layered other histories over it. The ground floor once had open arcading, the kind of covered arcade that allowed merchants and traders to work in shelter, though the outer arches were subsequently blocked up as the building's function shifted.

The critical shift came in 1706, when the structure was adapted for use as a court house, and the fabric of the building was reworked to reflect its new civic role. The result is a five-bay, two-storey building with an attic, its first floor finished in weather-slating and marked by a central Venetian window, the tripartite arched window form that was fashionable in Georgian and late-baroque architecture. The attic is particularly striking, featuring three curvilinear gables, also weather-slated, that give the roofline a distinctive stepped and rounded silhouette. Comparisons have been drawn with the Exchange in Youghal, a similar civic building recorded by the traveller and illustrator Thomas Dineley during his journey through Ireland in 1681, suggesting that both structures belong to the same tradition of modest but purposeful urban architecture that emerged in Munster's trading towns during the seventeenth century.

The building today houses Kinsale Museum, so the interior is accessible to visitors. The exterior repays a slow look, particularly the attic gables and the blocked ground-floor arches, where the evidence of earlier phases sits quietly in plain view.