Once part of the estate of Roxborough House, which lies about a kilometre to the west, the site carries echoes of its ancient name ‘Cregarosta’. This connects it to a 1574 list of Galway castles, where ‘Cragrosty’ castle in the barony of Loughrea was recorded as belonging to Ullick Caragh Mc Hubberd Burke, revealing its place in the complex web of Gaelic Irish lordships.

The castle itself is a fascinating study in medieval construction phases. What survives today is essentially half a building; the southern portion of a once larger four-storey rectangular tower. This remaining section, measuring 8.15 metres long by 4.2 metres wide, contains the spiral staircase and subsidiary chambers, whilst only irregular foundations mark where the northern half once stood, which would have housed the main living quarters. The original entrance in the south wall leads to a lobby that cleverly distributes access to a small eastern chamber, the western spiral stairs (now broken), and what was once a passage north to the main ground floor room, now blocked with rubble.

The tower reveals its construction history through subtle architectural clues. Stone vaults span between the subsidiary chambers at multiple levels, whilst doorways at various floors in the western and northern walls once connected to the now vanished second phase of building. A telling detail appears between the second and third floors: a narrow offset in the north wall combined with a distinct change in masonry character suggests the third floor was a later addition, likely part of the second phase of construction. The surviving windows showcase the medieval mason’s repertoire, featuring flat, round and ogee-headed single lights. Beyond the tower, traces of a rectangular bawn wall can still be spotted to the north, east and south, marking the defensive perimeter that once protected this Burke stronghold. The site has been under preservation order since 1997, ensuring this fragment of medieval Galway continues to stand witness to centuries of Irish history.