That pairing is itself worth noting. Formal garden layouts from this period rarely survive in the archaeological record as legible features; the fact that the gardens here were considered significant enough to record alongside the structure suggests something of their extent or coherence still remains visible on the ground.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a turbulent period for domestic building in Kilkenny. The county sat within and around the edges of the Pale, and many of its landed families, both Old English and Gaelic Irish, were engaged in rebuilding or fortifying their residences during this time. Houses of this era in the region tend to combine defensible elements inherited from the tower-house tradition with the newer fashions for more comfortable, horizontally arranged domestic space. Gardens attached to such properties were practical as well as ornamental, often incorporating walled enclosures, orchards, and kitchen plots that reflected the household economy of the period as much as any aesthetic impulse.