The Civil Survey of 1654 to 1656 records a thatched house in the townland then known as Ballynamony, and the structure that survives today, a single-storey vernacular building one room deep with seven bays, a hipped roof of reed thatch, and two red-brick chimneys each marked near the top with a plain string-course, is a plausible match for that description. A one-and-a-half storey return at the rear is a later addition, but the main body of the house retains the lobby-entry plan typical of the period. Vernacular in this context means it was built without a named architect, according to local tradition and available materials rather than any formal design.

The land's history in the mid-seventeenth century moves quickly from family inheritance to confiscation. In 1640 the property belonged to John Neale, described in the Civil Survey as the son of Hugh Neale of Ballyneale, who had received the land from his father on the occasion of his marriage, before the rebellion of 1641. After his death and the subsequent Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, the land was forfeit. It passed to two men named Dyck and Cunningham as payment for military service, a common mechanism by which soldiers were compensated during the Cromwellian settlement. They sold it on to an Alderman Barker, whose family held it for roughly two centuries. In 1876 the estate was sold to the Marquess of Ormond, bringing to a close a long sequence of ownership that stretches in an unbroken documentary line back to the house that was already old when the surveyors noted it down.