The road that now carries traffic to the Lodge, roughly 530 metres to the south-east, appears to run directly over the site of the original building, an unremarkable fact of rural infrastructure that quietly erases a couple of centuries of domestic history.

What the house looked like is known largely from a single sketch made by W. Robertson in 1851, a two-storey, seven-bay structure with chimneys on both gables, its front façade set to overlook the River Nore. The first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1839 shows the building in a T-plan arrangement, several outbuildings clustered around it, though the house itself is left unnamed on that sheet. By the time Robertson drew it, the house was presumably still standing but not long for the world; it was demolished before the end of the 19th century. The building is thought to date to the late 17th century and was most likely the residence of Richard Shee of Sheestown, whose name appears in an index of Irish wills dated to 1687 in the Carrigan Manuscripts. The Shee family were a prominent Kilkenny Catholic merchant dynasty, and a house of this scale on the Nore would have been a fitting seat for a family of their standing in that period.