A glebe house was the official residence of a Church of Ireland rector, built on glebe land, which was ground set aside by the state to provide income or accommodation for a parish clergyman. Hundreds of these houses were constructed across Ireland from the late eighteenth century onwards, many of them plain, solid, two-storey affairs that now survive in various states of use and disrepair. The one at Gortnaraheen, in County Galway, is recorded as a monument in its own right, which suggests it retains enough historical fabric to be considered significant beyond its architectural type.

Glebe houses occupied a curious social position in Irish rural life. They were, almost by definition, the homes of a minority faith in a majority Catholic landscape, and their histories frequently reflect the complexities of landlordism, the Established Church, and the upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many were sold off or abandoned after disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869, which severed the automatic link between parish clergy and state-provided land. Others passed into private hands during the land reform era or after independence. The specific history of the Gortnaraheen house, including when it was built, who occupied it, and what became of it, remains to be fully documented.