The house is located in the southern suburbs of Dublin, on the Murphystown Road in the Leopardstown area, adjacent to exit 14 of the M50 motorway.

The house and its surrounding estate were sold by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office in April 1999 for GBP£24 million, without having purchased an alternative residence.

It was the home of George Gresson a wealthy Dublin lawyer, son of the Reverend George Leslie Gresson, (1767-1842) Rector of Ardnurcher, County Westmeath, and his first wife Clarissa, daughter of Robert Reynell and his wife Elizabeth Knox, Killynen, County Westmeath.

(Skelton Robert Gresson, of Castle Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, beneficiary to his brother's will, George of Glencairn House).

In 1826, George Leslie Gresson married Mary Anne Turpin and they had five children: Charles, John, (John George Gresson, Cleric, Schoolmaster, married Eleanor Sophia Haygarth 12 January 1865 at Reading, Berkshire, Eng; entrusted their son Arthur George, to John Langdon Down, who pioneered research for those persons with developmental and intellectual disabilities at his home called Normansfield, near Teddington, an affluent riverside area of southwest London.

[4] The sale of the land facilitated the acquisition of a railway corridor for an extension of the Luas Sandyford (Green) line to Cherrywood.