Weather slating, a technique in which overlapping slates are fixed directly to the external walls to shed rain before rendering or plastering is applied, remains visible where the later finish has worn or been disturbed. It is the kind of detail that passes unnoticed unless you know to look for it, and it quietly complicates any tidy reading of the building's age.

The house at Barnabrow is a three-storey, three-bay structure, the arrangement of windows and central door on the south-facing entrance front following the restrained Georgian formula common to prosperous rural Cork. The double-gabled roofline, with chimneys set on each gable rather than rising from a central stack, gives the building a slightly austere silhouette. Lower, single-storey wings of two bays each are attached to the side elevations and project slightly forward of the main front, a modest but deliberate compositional gesture. These wings have round-headed window openings and a stone band course, a horizontal projecting line of stonework that marks a change in level or provides visual relief, details that sit in mild contrast to the plainer treatment of the main block. The window frames throughout are modern replacements, though the openings themselves remain.