That combination, a dwelling with its gardens surviving together from that period, is relatively rare. Gardens of that era were functional and formal in equal measure, typically enclosed, sometimes walled, and laid out with a geometry that reflected continental European influences filtering into Irish landed life during the Tudor and early Stuart periods.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Kilkenny were a time of considerable upheaval and architectural ambition side by side. The county was dominated by the Butler family, Earls and later Dukes of Ormonde, whose patronage shaped the built landscape considerably, but lesser landowners, English settlers, and surviving Gaelic families all left their mark in stone. Houses from this period in Ireland typically ranged from fortified tower houses, the tall narrow defensive structures that had been built since the fifteenth century, to more horizontal, outward-looking manor-style buildings that began to appear as relative stability made comfort a more viable concern than defence. The presence of gardens alongside such a structure suggests a household of some means and, perhaps, a degree of ambition about how domestic life should be ordered and presented.