It is a dovecote, a structure built to house pigeons kept for their meat and eggs, and it survives in remarkably good condition in County Kilkenny while the grand residence it once served has entirely vanished. What makes it stranger still is the second life it seems to have been given: at some point after the pigeons were gone, the nesting boxes were removed, the hole at the apex of the roof was sealed, and the building was apparently repurposed as a folly or teahouse.

The house this dovecote served, Killarney House, probably dated from the mid to late seventeenth century. The land came into the possession of a Cromwellian soldier named Robert Myhill following the confiscations of 1650, when Killarney, together with Rathduff and parts of Ballylinch and Legan, was granted to him as part of the redistribution of Irish estates under the Cromwellian settlement. His descendant, another Robert Myhill, was still living at Killarney House during the first half of the eighteenth century. At some point after that the house fell into disrepair and was eventually demolished; by the time the first Ordnance Survey six-inch map was published in 1839, it was already gone. The dovecote, however, was recorded on that same map as a circular structure tucked behind a small rectangular building, probably a gatehouse. The wide avenue, around thirty metres across, that once approached the house still exists, though only a narrow strip on its eastern side continues in use.

The dovecote itself is a compact structure, just 3.35 metres in diameter, built with straight walls rising to between 1.5 and 1.8 metres before transitioning into corbelling, a technique in which courses of stone are laid so that each projects slightly inward over the one below, gradually closing the roof without the need for a keystone or timber frame. A string course, a horizontal projecting band of masonry, marks the point where the corbelling begins. The total height reaches around 4.5 metres. The walls average 0.6 metres in thickness, incorporate some brick, and are heavily coated in mortar on the exterior. Inside, plaster survives up to the level of the string course. Both the corbelling and the general fabric of the structure were described as being in perfect condition.