The Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1842 recorded this settlement as Knockroe, a name that has since slipped out of everyday use as the place itself gradually emptied of people.

At its modest height, Knockroe comprised around seven houses. Fewer than half of those survive today, and one of the survivors is already a ruin. What remains gives a clear picture of vernacular building practice common to rural Cork: single-storey structures, mud-walled, with gable ends and a solitary chimney at one end. Mud-walled construction, sometimes called earthen building, was widespread in rural Ireland well into the nineteenth century, using compacted clay or wet mud as the primary structural material rather than stone or brick. At Knockroe, brick was used specifically for the chimneys, while stone took over at the upper portions of the walls and around the window and door openings, those openings sometimes referred to as opes in the architectural description of older Irish buildings. It is a practical, layered approach that reflects both the available materials and the skills of whoever built them. The roofs tell two different stories: one house retains its original slate covering, while another has been re-roofed at some point with corrugated iron, the kind of pragmatic repair that kept a building usable for a generation or two longer without solving the longer problem of depopulation.