In 1646, the Irish Confederate general Owen Roe O’Neill marched through this area, staying four nights at nearby Ballyshean before moving to Cullenagh Castle, where he dealt leniently with the captain and installed his own garrison. The Barringtons, who had acquired extensive estates here, built this castellated mansion on a strategic site offering commanding views across the countryside, from Dysart Hill in the northeast to Fossy Hill in the southeast.

Today, visitors can explore what remains of this four-storey fortified house, now reduced to its ivy-clad north gable and fragments of adjoining walls. Built from roughly coursed limestone rubble with carefully placed quoins at the corners, the structure showcases defensive architecture typical of its era. The north gable features an impressive chimney stack with a broad external projection running nearly its full width. At first floor level, two finely crafted limestone windows flank the chimney, each with glazing bar holes and small rectangular openings beneath that likely served as gun loops. Inside, three staggered fireplaces mark the different floor levels, whilst a slop-stone at ground level hints at the domestic routines of its former inhabitants.

The house was originally protected by a substantial bawn wall, approximately one metre thick, which extended southward and incorporated defensive corner towers. Though much of this defensive perimeter has vanished, portions of the south wall survive along with remnants of the southeast corner tower, which still preserves its stone vault over the ground floor and two small rectangular openings facing north and east. Modified sections of what may have been the southwest corner tower also remain, now appearing as two rectangular structures. These ruins, set within the garden of a nineteenth-century house, offer a tangible connection to Laois’s contested past, when fortified homes like this one served as both residences and strongholds in an uncertain landscape.