Though legal constraints prevented them from excavating the castle keep itself, the team revealed the foundations of a substantial defensive wall, averaging 2.2 metres thick and built directly onto limestone bedrock. This roughly circular enclosure, measuring approximately 80 metres north to south and 60 metres east to west, featured a well-cobbled entrance on its southern side. The eastern section of the wall stood on an artificially constructed platform of loose stones and earth, raised about a metre high to level the naturally sloping ground.

Within the bawn, excavations uncovered a square stone structure measuring 3.4 metres on each side, with a circular stone setting built atop it and surrounded by thick charcoal deposits. This appears to have been the base of a domed oven, a type commonly found on medieval sites, with only a badly corroded iron knife found amongst its rubble core. More poignantly, the archaeologists discovered thirty-one skeletons, with thirty concentrated in a small area immediately north of the castle. Most were young children and babies, suggesting this corner of the bawn had been repurposed as a killeen, an unconsecrated burial ground for unbaptised infants; a practice that speaks to the complex religious and social customs of post-medieval Ireland.

The site yielded an array of artefacts spanning several centuries, including late and post-medieval pottery sherds, numerous iron objects, clay pipe fragments, a blue glass bead, a bronze disc-headed pin, and notably, an Irish halfpenny from the reign of Charles II dated to 1683. Historical records trace the castle’s ownership from Tiege O’Donogh in the late 1500s through various Anglo-Irish families, including the Lysters, Jephsons, and Berkeleys. The castle saw action during the 1640s when it was besieged, and according to local memory, parts of the structure stood to considerable height until the 1930s, when authorities deemed it unsafe and demolished it. By 1974, only fragments of masonry incorporated into a modern garden wall remained visible, making the archaeological excavation all the more valuable for understanding this once-formidable stronghold.