The roofline, with its steep pitch, dormer windows, and tall chimney stacks, has the silhouette of a French château transplanted to the Irish midlands, yet beneath that confident Victorian flourish lies a building whose true age is genuinely contested. Scholars disagree by the better part of a century over when it was first built, and the house itself offers few easy answers.

The U-plan structure, eleven bays wide with two-bay advanced ends, a form in which the wings project forward from the main facade to create a sheltered forecourt arrangement, was identified by Craig and Garner in 1975 as originating in the mid-17th century. Bence-Jones, writing in 1988, placed its beginnings in the early 18th century instead. Both accounts agree that what stands today is largely the product of later interventions: a Doric doorcase, meaning a classical doorway framed by columns in the plain, unornamented Doric order, was introduced during the 18th century, and then around 1870 the attic storey and its steeply pitched roof were added in what Bence-Jones described as the French château style. The 17th-century house, if it ever stood here in a recognisable form, has been almost entirely absorbed. Almost, but not quite. At the rear of the building, a central two-bay three-storey return survives with a staggered arrangement of wall openings, unusually thick walls, and the kind of proportions, large expanses of masonry relative to window size, that suggest an earlier phase of construction predating the more polished work visible at the front. It is the kind of clue that rewards patience rather than a quick glance.