Set against the west gable of an otherwise modest rectangular Church of Ireland building in Kilmore, it rises three storeys and is finished with crenellations, the battlemented parapet more commonly associated with medieval fortifications than a rural West Cork congregation. That alone would be enough to make the building worth a second look, but it is the first-storey openings in the tower that are genuinely peculiar: hour-glass-shaped apertures that belong to no standard ecclesiastical vocabulary and sit oddly, almost playfully, against the tower's otherwise austere profile.

The church was built in 1821, a period when the Church of Ireland was constructing and renovating buildings across the country with funds made available under various ecclesiastical improvement schemes. The core structure is small and straightforward, with two windows in both the north and south walls, each formed with pointed, or "Gothic", arches and hood mouldings, the small projecting drip-stone that runs above a window opening to deflect rainwater. The semicircular apse projecting from the east wall, a rounded sanctuary extension that became fashionable in ecclesiastical architecture during the Victorian period, was not part of the original build; neither was the vestry at the northeast corner. Both were added after 1842, suggesting the congregation had grown or its liturgical needs had changed. The apse is lit by three lancet windows, narrow and tall with pointed tops, which give the interior of that end a quieter, more contemplative quality than the tower's eccentricities might lead you to expect.

The church sits at the northern end of its graveyard and remains in use, which means the building has been maintained rather than left to the slow processes of ruin and reclamation that have taken so many small rural churches of the same era. The hour-glass openings in the tower are best appreciated from outside, where their oddity is fully visible against the stonework.