Records show it was already standing in 1461, when it belonged to a certain ‘Captain Burke’, placing it firmly within the turbulent era of Gaelic lordships and Norman settlements that characterised late medieval Galway. The rectangular tower, measuring 12.5 metres long and 11.3 metres wide, rises three to four storeys from a foundation of large boulders, its grey stone walls still in reasonable condition despite the passing centuries.

The castle’s defensive features reveal the anxieties of its time; visitors approaching the pointed arch doorway on the south wall would have been watched carefully through a narrow slit that resembles a murder hole, positioned between the outer and inner arches. Inside, a spiral staircase winds upward from the east side of the entrance, whilst the west side housed the guardroom. The interior preserves several domestic comforts including fireplaces in the north and south gables, with another on the first floor’s west wall, where a chimney stack still clings to the southern gable. A stone vault separates the first and second floors, and the builders even included a garderobe, its exit chute still visible at the base of the eastern wall. Windows are mostly simple defensive slits, though a single ogee-headed window graces the western wall, offering a touch of Gothic elegance.

What makes Anbally particularly interesting is its extensive bawn system; essentially fortified courtyards that provided additional protection. The inner bawn forms a rectangle measuring 38 by 31 metres, extending from the tower’s south and west walls and incorporating a two-storey building at the southern end of its western wall. Beyond this lies traces of an even larger outer bawn, roughly 100 by 95 metres, its boundaries still marked by earthen and stone banks to the north, east and south. This layered defence system speaks to the castle’s strategic importance in controlling this stretch of countryside near the River Clare, serving as both a family stronghold and a statement of power in the contested landscapes of medieval Connacht.