The rectangular structure appears on the 1837 Ordnance Survey map, marked simply as ‘Fieldtown Castle in ruins’, but by 1980, surveyors could find no visible surface remains of what was once presumably a defensive stronghold. Today, visitors to the site will find only a slight depression in the corner of a field, the last subtle trace of the castle’s footprint in the landscape.

The castle’s disappearance tells a familiar story of practical recycling in rural Ireland. The footings of the northeast and northwest walls may still form part of the modern field boundaries, though no cut stone remains visible to confirm this theory. More likely, the castle’s dressed stones were carted away to construct the nearby farmyard and Fieldtown House, which sits just 15 metres from the original castle site. Despite this proximity, no medieval stonework can be spotted in any of the current buildings, suggesting the castle’s materials were thoroughly repurposed or perhaps hidden beneath later renovations.

Historical records provide tantalising glimpses of the site’s past. The castle doesn’t appear on the 17th century Down Survey maps of Churchtown and Conry parish, raising questions about when exactly it fell into ruin. We do know that by 1641, the lands of nearby Brottonstown Little belonged to Alexander Hope, recorded as an ‘Irish papist’, placing the area firmly within the complex religious and political landscape of pre Cromwellian Ireland. The castle’s absence from these crucial survey documents suggests it may have already been abandoned or destroyed by the mid 1600s, leaving only its ghostly outline to puzzle later map makers and historians.