Though it was recorded as a windmill on the Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1839, this cylindrical structure was never grinding grain. It was a wind-pump, built to drain the adjacent quarry rather than to mill anything at all, and the distinction matters. Wind-pumps used the same rotational energy as conventional windmills but directed it towards lifting water rather than turning millstones, and in a low-lying coastal landscape riddled with extraction pits, keeping the ground dry was a practical necessity.

The tower itself is modest but solid. It stands roughly seven metres high with an external diameter of about 5.57 metres and an internal diameter of 3.78 metres, suggesting walls of considerable thickness. There appear to be three floors, and the building has opposing doorways set at the north and south, though no windows are visible. At some point before 1880, the wind-pump was superseded. That year, the Drinagh cement-works began producing Portland cement, a hydraulic cement made by burning limestone and clay together, and the operation switched to steam-powered pumps, which were more reliable and considerably more powerful. The works continued producing until 1923, after which the site fell quiet. The quarry, the tower, and the embankment it sits on all appear together on that 1839 map, suggesting the wind-pump was already in use well before industrialisation reached this corner of County Wexford.

The tower sits on a wide embankment on the mainland side, with the reclaimed wetland of the South Slob stretching away to the east. The South Slob is now better known as a wildlife reserve and one of the principal wintering grounds for Greenland white-fronted geese in Ireland, which gives the whole area a particular seasonal atmosphere from autumn onwards. The cement-works are long gone, but the ivy-draped cylinder of the old wind-pump remains, quietly anomalous on its embankment, looking rather more agricultural than industrial and giving almost nothing away about the quarrying operation it once served.