Undulations in the earth and fragments of ruin are still visible among the undergrowth, the quiet evidence of a building that was itself a replacement, part of a longer sequence of habitation on this estate that stretches back to the early eighteenth century or beyond.

The house on this spot was built around 1770, replacing an earlier structure whose site is thought to lie roughly a kilometre to the west-southwest. A sketch preserved in the present Muckross House gives some sense of what it looked like. Writing in 1994, Bary described it, on the basis of that sketch, as a three-storey house over a basement with seven bays, dormer windows on the upper storey, gable ends, and numerous chimneys, the sort of substantial but unfussy arrangement that was common among the Irish landed gentry of the period. What sets it apart in the description is a curious square addition at the eastern end, apparently attached to the main block but architecturally distinct from it, and unexplained by the surviving record. Whether it served a functional purpose, housed a staircase, or simply reflected a later modification is not known. The house was eventually abandoned in favour of the present Muckross House, and the earlier building was left to fall.