Most vernacular cottages of the period stretched to three or four bays at most, so this building at Lisnacon, dating from around 1800, represents something a little more substantial than the typical labourer's dwelling, even if it shares the same essential grammar of roughcast rendered walls, square-headed openings, and a hipped thatched roof sweeping down over a rendered chimneystack.

Vernacular houses of this type were built without architects, shaped instead by local custom, available materials, and the practical demands of rural life. The hipped roof, where all four sides slope downward rather than ending in a gable, was a common choice in parts of Munster, offering better resistance to wind than a gabled form. The walls here are painted roughcast render, a lime-based coating that protected the underlying masonry from rain, with smoother rendered plinths at the base and finished edges to the ends. The original windows and doors have been replaced or supplemented over time, with metal casement windows now sitting in the old square-headed openings, and timber battened doors that echo an older tradition even if they are not original. To the rear, later outbuildings have accumulated, including a two-storey three-bay structure with external steps rising to the gable end, and a single-storey addition running off to the north, both roofed in corrugated iron, which became the practical successor to thatch across rural Ireland from the late nineteenth century onwards.