The building sits within the west and north ranges of Ennis Friary, and while the friary church is well known as a medieval monument, the domestic quarters beside it have had a quieter, stranger afterlife.

The friary at Ennis was founded in the thirteenth century and functioned as a Franciscan house through the medieval period. Its cloistral ranges, the residential and communal buildings arranged around the cloister garth, included a refectory where the friars took their meals and a dormitory above. At some point in the seventeenth century these spaces were converted from their original religious use, repurposed as domestic or commercial accommodation. The conversion preserved the roofline and an original staircase, and fragments of the late medieval stonework were retained within the fabric of the rebuilt structure. A significant renovation was carried out in 2008, when the premises was adapted for use as a restaurant and public house, though the earlier elements survived. The cloistral buildings as a whole are subject to a preservation order under the National Monuments Acts, which has helped ensure that what remains of the medieval and seventeenth-century material has not been entirely erased by successive generations of alteration.

For a visitor to Ennis, the friary church tends to draw the attention, with its well-documented sculpture and tracery. The domestic ranges beside it are less remarked upon, but the building now operating as a pub and restaurant carries within it a layered record of occupation, from medieval friars eating in common, through seventeenth-century adaptation, to a thoroughly modern renovation that left the old roof and stair in place.