The pineapple, a symbol of hospitality and plenty that recurred throughout Georgian decorative arts, sits a little incongruously above what is otherwise a serious ashlar limestone facade, its pedimented gable dated 1827 giving it the composed bearing of a civic building rather than a place of worship.

The entrance front faces roughly east-south-east and is the most elaborately worked part of the structure. Three rectangular doorways are set across it, with small niches between them that would once have held stoups, the shallow basins used to hold holy water at a church entrance. Above, a round-headed window lights the interior at first-floor level, flanked by further niches in the side bays. Inside, the church runs seven bays along its length, each bay marked by round-headed windows, and the original decorative scheme survives in the form of a plaster cornice and a ceiling rose. A wooden gallery occupies the east-south-east end. The building replaced an earlier thatched chapel that had stood nearby, a reminder of how recently and how rapidly Catholic church architecture in Ireland transformed during the nineteenth century, as the restrictions of the Penal era gave way to something more permanent and publicly confident.

The church sits set back from the street line in Doneraile, which gives the facade a little room to be seen properly. The pineapples on the buttresses are easy to miss if you are not looking up.