That persistence is worth pausing over. The building that once housed the destitute poor of east Cork during the Famine era now cares for the elderly, its walls enclosing a history that most people passing through the town would never guess at.

The complex was already in existence by 1842, when it was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of the area. What remains of the main block is a substantial 14-bay, two-storey structure oriented on a north-south axis, with gabled attic windows breaking the roofline and three-storey, double-gable-ended wings projecting at right angles from either end to form a plan that is roughly H-shaped. This layout, with its interlocking ranges, is characteristic of workhouse design from the period, intended to segregate inmates by sex, age, and health status. A one-storey extension running east once connected the accommodation block to a two-storey hospital building, though that hospital was demolished in the 1970s. The warden's house, which stood on the western side, was replaced in the 1950s by a hospital complex. A fever hospital shown on the 1842 map to the west has also gone. The stone enclosing wall and its entrance piers to the west still stand, as does a convent that appears on the 1902 Ordnance Survey map immediately north of the main block, suggesting the site continued to grow and change well into the early twentieth century. The convent's proximity to the original workhouse buildings reflects a pattern common across Ireland, where religious orders often took over or established adjacent institutions once the Poor Law system began to wind down.