That combination, a Georgian country house sharing ground with ancient burial evidence, gives the place a layered quality that goes well beyond the architectural.

The house was built in the early nineteenth century by Arthur Grove Annesley, and the Annesley family has remained in occupation ever since, an unusual continuity for an Irish country house. The entrance front faces west across seven bays, with a central wooden porch supported by engaged Doric columns and a full entablature, giving it a composed, classical formality. The garden front, facing east towards the river, is irregularly fenestrated, which lends it a more ad hoc character, as though the interior arrangement took priority over external symmetry. A steeply pitched hipped roof with a central valley and projecting eaves sits above both. Two stable courts flank the garden front, and a walled garden lies to the north. The river garden to the east was laid out in the first half of the twentieth century, working with the natural topography of the Awbeg valley. The demesne walls and much of the parkland survive largely intact. The ornate castellated gate lodge to the northwest was designed by Benjamin Woodward, the Cork-born architect best known for his work on the Museum Building at Trinity College Dublin and his partnership with John Ruskin's favoured builder Thomas Deane, making even the entrance to the estate a building of some architectural note.