2 Abbey Street in Ennis, a four-storey end-of-terrace house from around 1670 wears its history in layers that do not quite add up at first glance. The roof sits at an unusual angle, the ground floor carries an early twentieth-century shopfront, and sections of the gable wall are built in ashlar, a term for carefully cut and dressed stone more commonly associated with civic or ecclesiastical buildings than with a modest town house.

Those ashlar blocks are the key to the puzzle. They were not original to the house but were incorporated from a courthouse built on or near the same site around 1733, which had itself replaced an earlier market-house. So the stonework visible on the gable today has passed through at least three phases of use: public commerce, civic justice, and private residence. The house predates the courthouse by some six decades, placing its origins in the latter half of the seventeenth century, a period when Ennis was consolidating its role as a significant Clare market town. The awkward roof angle may reflect the piecemeal way the structure absorbed and adapted material from its neighbours over time, though the precise sequence of alterations is not fully documented.