The bell tower on the west side of the nave is a new addition from the 1830s, but its counterpart in the angle formed by the nave and the east transept is an earlier tower associated with the medieval Franciscan friary nearby. Two towers of similar size, one medieval and one Georgian Gothic, standing in near-symmetry on opposite sides of the same building is an arrangement you do not encounter every day.

The church was designed by Charles Cotterel of Cork and built between 1831 and 1837, replacing an earlier chapel on a different site. A date plaque of 1831 is still visible on the south elevation of the west tower. The design is ornate for its period and setting: the west and south elevations, which face the street, are built of coursed limestone ashlar, a cut and carefully laid stonework, finished with an embattled parapet, hood-moulded windows, corner buttresses, and pinnacles. The east and north elevations, less visible from the street, are of rougher random ashlar. Inside, the nave and transepts are fitted with wooden galleries, and the ceiling is a plastered concave vault with ornate rib groins, the ribs fanning out in a way more commonly associated with late Gothic stonework than with early nineteenth-century plasterwork. The building was described in detail by Samuel Lewis in his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland in 1837, the very year construction was said to be complete, though a later visitor, writing in 1852, noted that the work did not appear fully finished even then.