That combination, a classified site with almost no accessible description, is not unusual for rural Kilkenny, a county whose landscape is scattered with the remnants of late medieval and early modern settlement, much of it still awaiting thorough documentation.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Kilkenny were a period of considerable building activity among both the Old English settler families and the Gaelic Irish lords who had absorbed many of the same architectural habits. Domestic structures from this era ranged from fortified tower houses to more modest undefended dwellings, sometimes built in association with a bawn, the enclosing stone wall that offered a degree of protection to a household and its livestock. Without more specific information it is impossible to say which category this Newtown structure falls into, or whether any meaningful fabric survives at all. The formal classification as a house monument, rather than a tower house or castle, suggests something lower in the defensive hierarchy, though the distinction in the field can sometimes be difficult to draw cleanly.