The Ordnance Survey's first edition labels it Clonliff House; the latest edition calls it the Red House. Both names refer to the same two-storey-over-basement structure, its entrance facing west, its age still not precisely fixed. That ambiguity is part of what makes it interesting.

The building's date of construction has never been firmly established, but internal evidence points toward the seventeenth century. The staircase, in particular, carries the hallmarks of that period: barley-sugar balusters, which are the twisted, candy-spiral turnings characteristic of late seventeenth-century joinery, combined with low risers, a broad handrail, and panelling along the stair wall. Taken together, these details suggest a date earlier than the house's more general classification of seventeenth to eighteenth century might imply. Dillon and Cosgrave, writing in 1909, noted the Red House in their account of the area, which at least confirms it was a recognised feature of the Clonliffe landscape by the early twentieth century, even if its origins remained unrecorded.

Clonliffe College, the Catholic diocesan seminary for Dublin, occupies a substantial campus off the Drumcondra Road, and the house sits within that larger institutional setting. Access to the grounds is not straightforwardly open to the public, so anyone with a particular interest in the building would be wise to make enquiries with the college beforehand. The River Tolka runs close by, and the elevated position of the house above the river is noticeable even from outside the grounds. The red brick exterior, which likely accounts for the more recent map designation, is what most visitors will observe from a distance, the interior details of that staircase being reserved for those who get rather closer.