These features, which could range from ornamental lakes and woodland walks to ha-has, cascades, and eye-catchers, were the visible expression of a particular eighteenth and nineteenth century ambition: to make the natural world appear to cooperate with the aesthetic intentions of the household at the centre of the demesne.

Killeen sits within a part of Connacht where estate landscapes were laid out with considerable care during the Georgian and Victorian periods, often drawing on fashionable English and continental ideas about the picturesque. The broader Killeen area has long associations with landed families who shaped the land around their houses into something that announced status, education, and taste as much as it served any practical purpose.