The discovery suggested that the building had not simply been constructed on the site of something older, but had actually grown around it, absorbing an earlier castle or fortified structure into its later, more genteel form.

The history of the place reaches back to 1667, when Sir Henry Lynch of Castlecarra granted the lands of Cloonlagheen to his mother in lieu of her dowry, an arrangement by which a widow received lands or income as her entitlement from a deceased husband's estate. Those same lands were confirmed to Lynch by letters patent in 1678. The property passed through the Lynch and later Lynch/Blosse family for well over two centuries, the house accumulating its present shape along the way. Described as largely Georgian in character, it follows a U-shaped plan and was extended in 1902 with an east wing and again in 1948 with a west wing. The estate itself was sold in 1916, though the family held onto the house and its adjoining lands until 1991. What makes the building quietly odd is this layering: a five-bay, two-storey Georgian facade containing, somewhere within its walls, the bones of a much older defensive structure that remained invisible until the building work of the late twentieth century brought it back to light.