That small detail anchors this farmhouse in Cooloran, County Tipperary, to the early seventeenth century, making it considerably older than its pebble-dashed exterior would suggest. Where the render has worn away at the base of the northwest corner, crude stone quoins are visible beneath, a reminder of the rougher construction that preceded later improvements. Tucked into the rear of the present building is a much older thatched house, now incorporated into the main structure and a rear extension, its original dimensions of roughly 16.65 metres long by 4.7 metres wide still traceable within the fabric of the whole.

By 1640, the land here, recorded as Coollonen, was in the hands of one John Butler of Lissnodobrid, identified in the Civil Survey of 1654 to 1656 as a gentleman and an Irish Papist, the latter a standard administrative designation of the Cromwellian survey period used to flag Catholic landowners. The survey notes drily that on the lands stood a small stone house in a decaying condition and no other improvement. Whether that was the structure now embedded in the rear of the house, or a yet earlier building on the same site, is not clear. A second datestone in the farmyard, a limestone slab of 1840 bearing a cross above the date, almost certainly marks the point at which the older house was significantly remodelled into the three-bay, two-storey form that stands today, with its east-facing facade, hipped roof, and two central chimney stacks.