The structure on the rise above Skerries began its working life as a standard four-sail mill, but a fire around 1844 changed it permanently. Rather than simply rebuilding what had been there before, the owners reconfigured it with five shuttered sails, a design less common in Ireland and one that gives the tower its slightly unusual proportions. Inside, the mill retains two pairs of grinding stones and a hoist, with a pair of millstones still sitting on the spindle, so the working anatomy of the place remains largely legible to a visitor.

The tower itself is five storeys, tapering as it rises, with a sail diameter of around twenty metres and an internal diameter of four and a half metres. Entrances are set diametrically opposite each other, at north and south, with three pairs of windows facing east and southwest, a layout that speaks to the practical logic of catching wind from multiple directions. The 1837 Ordnance Survey six-inch map shows the mill sitting within a circular enclosure, of which only a scarped ridge, a low, artificially cut bank in the ground, survives today. Researchers have suggested this ridge was probably a track for the tail pole, the long beam used to rotate the cap and sails into the wind. The site may have an even longer history: a windmill is mentioned in the lease of monastic lands at Holmpatrick to Sir Thomas of Baggotrath in 1578, recorded in D'Alton's history, raising the possibility that milling activity here predates the current structure by several centuries.

The mill stands on elevated ground outside Balrothery village, north County Dublin, and has been restored by Fingal County Council. The interior machinery, including the millstones on their spindle, can be examined on open days. The scarped ridge that once formed the circular enclosure is subtle and easy to miss, but worth looking for in the ground around the base of the tower, particularly in low winter light when earthworks tend to show more clearly.