That gap itself says something about how many such structures survive in rural Ireland, noted on maps and in surveys, yet still awaiting the fuller attention that might explain who built them, who lived in them, and what became of them.

The seventeenth century was a particularly turbulent period for domestic architecture in Connacht. The Cromwellian land settlements of the 1650s displaced vast numbers of Gaelic and Old English landowners, and the landscape filled with both the ruins of older households and the newer stone buildings put up by incoming settlers or by those who managed to retain some portion of their holdings. A house surviving from this period in east Galway could plausibly belong to either tradition. Mackney is a small townland, and without detailed excavation or documentary research it is difficult to say more about the specific structure beyond its broad date range and its classification as a house rather than a tower house or fortified structure.