A dovecote, in the tradition of estate farming across early modern Ireland and Britain, was a practical larder as much as an architectural statement, providing a year-round supply of young birds, known as squabs, to a household that could afford the upkeep. The Cronody example is a particularly well-documented one, its interior walls still lined with fifteen rows of stone nesting boxes, each row holding thirty individual holes, giving a total of 450 nests.

The structure dates to around 1716, built at roughly the same time as Cronodymore House to the north, which it was designed to serve. Writing in 1895, a commentator named Gillman described the nesting boxes in some detail: each one was cut in the shape of an L, with an entrance just wide enough to admit a human arm, the angled recess inside giving the sitting bird enough shelter to nest undisturbed. The birds were checked twice a month for young, and Gillman noted, with a certain domestic satisfaction, that pigeon pies must have featured regularly among the dishes served to guests at Cronody. By the time the Ordnance Survey mapped the area in 1842, the building was already being referred to as the "Old Pigeon Ho.", suggesting it had by then fallen out of active use, or at least that its original purpose had begun to feel like a relic of an earlier way of running a large country estate.

The building is circular with an internal diameter of 5.5 metres, constructed in stone, and roofless. A round-headed door opening faces south, towards the river. Its prominent position on the landscape, overlooking both house and water, gives it a presence somewhat out of proportion to its original agricultural function.