It is fenced off now, mildly graffitied, and reduced to a single storey, yet the fabric of its walls tells a more complicated story. The structure is post-medieval in its basic form but contains medieval insertions, including a pointed arched doorway with moulded and pocked-dressed jamb stones set above ground level in the north wall, which once connected the building to an attached range that no longer exists. Quoins, which are the dressed corner stones that give a wall its structural integrity and a degree of architectural formality, mark the edges of the build. The interior, measuring roughly 9.70 metres north to south and 9.20 metres east to west, is pierced by a collection of windows of varying types, segmental-arched on the south wall, oblong on the west, and a narrow opening to the east, with further windows set lower down. Significant mortar washout has destabilised sections of the masonry, and there has been minor collapse.

The building is popularly known as Glassmore Abbey, a name carrying a weight of historical association that may not entirely belong here. Glas Mar was the site where St Cronan was killed by Viking raiders, and the early medieval sources, as summarised by Stokes in 1905, describe that church as lying to the south of Swords, not to the north-west where this structure stands. The attribution of this site as Glasmore Abbey was made by the antiquarian John O'Donovan in 1836, working on information supplied to him by a local man. O'Donovan was a meticulous scholar of Irish topography, but in this instance the identification rests on local oral tradition rather than documentary certainty. Test excavations carried out in 1999 ahead of the housing development surrounding the site, licensed under number 99E0536 and directed by Swan, produced nothing of archaeological significance to settle the matter either way.

The building sits within the green area of the Cianlea estate and is visible from the surrounding streets, though access to the structure itself is restricted by fencing. The medieval insertions, particularly the pointed archway in the north wall, are the most architecturally legible features and worth examining closely from outside the barrier, graffiti notwithstanding. The ambiguity of the site is in some ways its most interesting quality: a post-medieval shell carrying older architectural fragments, named after a place it may never have been, preserved in the middle of a modern suburb because no one has yet proven it is not what tradition claims.