Sallowmount takes the first part of its name from the sallow, a native willow common to wet ground in the Irish midlands and west, and the combination of tree and earthwork in a single place-name suggests a landscape that was once read very differently from how it appears today. Houses with such names frequently sit near, or directly upon, earlier features in the ground, whether a low mound, a modified rise in the terrain, or something more deliberate left by earlier inhabitants.

Beyond its name and its location in this corner of east Galway, the documentary record for Sallowmount House is, at present, thin. The site is recorded as a monument, which in Irish heritage terms means it has been identified as a place of potential archaeological significance, but the detail that would allow a fuller account of its origins, its builders, or its architectural character is not yet publicly available. What can be said is that Mackney sits in a part of Galway where the land holds considerable depth of occupation, and where ascendancy-era houses, earlier earthworks, and traces of pre-modern settlement often exist in close proximity, sometimes on the same ground.