It appears in the archaeological record under the blunt designation of "indeterminate date", which is less a description than an admission: something was built here, at some point, by someone, and the evidence has not yet yielded enough to say more than that.

Knocknerry sits within a county whose landscape is dense with layered occupation, from the limestone plateaus of the Burren to the low drumlin country further east, and Clare has accumulated a remarkable number of recorded monuments across every period of human settlement. A house listed without a period attached is not necessarily a ruin of great antiquity; the classification reflects the current state of evidence rather than implying anything dramatic. It could be a remnant of post-medieval rural settlement, a structure connected to one of the many land reorganisations that followed clearance and famine, or something older altogether. The townland name itself, Knockerry, derives from the Irish and likely contains a reference to a hill or raised ground, which in Clare's agricultural geography would often have been a natural focus for building.