The 1842 Ordnance Survey map marks this spot with a circular enclosure, whilst the 1905 edition rather poetically labels it ‘Castle Dairy on site of Farahy Castle’. When the antiquarian Grove White visited in 1907, he found something remarkable: parts of the medieval castle had been incorporated directly into Walsh’s farmhouse, with the western end of the building serving as the hall and kitchen.

Grove White documented walls three to four feet thick and roughly 25 feet high, noting with particular interest an original ceiling in the kitchen complete with cross beams, joists, and boards that had survived from the castle’s heyday. The castle itself measured approximately 34 feet 6 inches long by 19 feet 7 inches wide, though a portion had already been demolished around 1860. Today, even less remains; the farmhouse has vanished entirely, and no visible traces of the castle can be spotted amongst the surviving farm buildings.

The castle’s history reflects the turbulent changes of Irish landownership. Originally a stronghold of the Roche family, who held considerable power in North Cork during the medieval period, the property changed hands dramatically during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. Oliver Cromwell granted the castle and its lands to the Bowen family, part of the widespread redistribution of Irish estates that followed the Confederate Wars of the 1640s and 50s.