A tall pointed light that once filled the gable end of the nave was removed at some point and installed in the nearby Dominican friary church, where local tradition holds it originally came from. Whether that account is accurate or not, the window's journey between two ecclesiastical ruins in the same small parish gives the place an oddly circular quality, as if the buildings have been slowly exchanging parts across the centuries.

The church sits in the north-western quadrant of its graveyard and was built in the early eighteenth century on a site with a long history of religious use. The earlier parish church that stood here was already recorded as a ruin in 1615 and remained so as late as 1694. When Charles Smith wrote his survey of County Cork around 1750, he described the Glanworth church as 'lately rebuilt', a phrase that most likely points to its original construction rather than any later renovation. A communion plate presented by the bishop to the 'Church of Glanore' in 1723 may mark the date of consecration. The three-storey tower at the west end came later, added around 1799, its floors stepping inward as they rise and each level separated by a projecting string course, a horizontal band of stonework used to mark the transition between floors. The tower's corners finish in raised, pinnacle-like projections that give the ruin a slightly formal silhouette against the sky.

The fabric of the building is limestone rubble rendered over and finished with ashlar quoins, the precisely cut corner stones that give a sense of order to an otherwise rough wall. Inside the rectangular nave, five pointed windows are now blocked, three in the south wall and two in the north. At the eastern end of the north wall there is a vestry containing a burial vault. The west doorway, with its cut limestone surround, is blocked as well. Much is sealed off or missing, but the structure remains largely intact, a compact and legible ruin in a graveyard that continues to be used.