It is the kind of conversion that would have horrified the mill's original builders, though it is also, in its way, a fairly accurate summary of how agricultural Ireland has tended to deal with its industrial past.

The structure is considerable even in its ruined state: six bays wide and three storeys tall, built into a slope with its long axis running roughly east-north-east to west-south-west. That orientation, and the way the building is set into the hillside, is typical of water-powered corn mills, which needed to manage the fall of water carefully to drive the millwheel. The wheel pit, the stone-lined housing that contained the waterwheel itself, is still visible here, measuring 2.4 metres wide and 1.8 metres deep, and it protrudes through a tall stone arch set into the middle of the south elevation. That arch is one of the more arresting details still legible in the structure: a deliberate piece of masonry engineering designed to carry the mill's wall above the working mechanism below. Modern farm buildings now stand to the north, and the contrast between the low functional sheds and the tall, overgrown mill behind them gives the site an oddly layered quality, two centuries of agricultural change occupying the same small patch of Cork.