The right side is hipped, meaning the thatch slopes down on all four sides to meet the walls, while the left side is gabled, with the roof coming to a ridge and the end wall rising to meet it in a triangle. This mixing of roofing forms on a single dwelling is an unusual feature, and it gives the building an asymmetry that extends to its other details as well. The doorway sits off-centre to the left of the four-bay west-facing front, and the chimney follows the same leftward lean, also positioned off-centre.

Vernacular houses of this type, built from local materials and shaped more by practical need and incremental change than by any architect's plan, were once common across rural Ireland. Thatched roofs using rush, straw, or water reed were the standard covering for ordinary domestic buildings for centuries, and the survival of a genuinely occupied thatched house is now relatively rare. The blend of hipped and gabled forms here may reflect building in phases, with different sections raised or modified at different times, each following slightly different local conventions. The house sits directly on the roadside, which was typical of rural Cork settlements where dwellings were built close to the road for access and visibility rather than set back behind formal grounds.