Following a banquet, the castle was destroyed by fire in 1827. The rebuilding began at the direction of Mayor Thomas Dunscombe in 1828 and was completed in March 1829. The architects added three additional storeys to the original tower and rebuilt the out-buildings. The new building cost the City of Cork £1,000. The architects were George Richard Pain and James Pain, who were responsible for other public buildings around Cork at the time. The neo-gothic complex of buildings around a courtyard is essentially what remains today.