The contrast between its original ambition and its current condition is the thing that catches you, because this was never a grand mansion or a fortified pile; it was precisely the kind of modest, well-proportioned rural residence that embodied a particular moment in Irish landowning taste.

The house faces northwest across a three-bay entrance front, with a central doorway topped by a rectangular fanlight and flanked by matching window openings. The roofline is hipped, a style that tucks the roof inward at the ends rather than finishing in gable peaks, giving the building a contained, balanced look that was fashionable for smaller country houses of the period. Two chimneys sit off-centre above it. At the rear, the remains of two further hipped additions survive, suggesting the house was extended at some point, though those wings are now also in a state of ruin. A short section of wall projecting from the northwest side of each side elevation hints at an enclosed yard or outbuilding arrangement that has otherwise largely disappeared. In 1837, the topographer Samuel Lewis recorded Glansheskin in his exhaustive survey of Ireland, describing the house as a "neat modern residence", which in the conventions of the time was a compliment; it meant the building was up to date, well-kept, and unshowy in the right kind of way. That description, preserved in the first volume of his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, now reads with a certain irony.