Built from limestone rubble with distinctive dressed quoin stones, this compact fortification measures just 9.2 metres north to south and 7.6 metres east to west, yet it packs an impressive array of defensive features into its modest footprint. The castle’s history can be traced back to 1540, when Theobald, son of Peter Hedeyn, mortgaged his inheritance in ‘Ballynenoddagh’ to the Earl of Ormond. Following the Earl’s death in 1546, the property passed to his fourth son, Walter, whose descendants would maintain ownership through the tumultuous years that followed.

The castle’s defensive architecture reveals the constant threat of violence in medieval Ireland. Visitors entering through the pointed doorway in the east wall would find themselves in a lobby overlooked by a murder hole, allowing defenders to rain down projectiles from the main hall above. A cleverly designed mural staircase winds through the walls, complete with door recesses that could be secured to trap intruders between floors. The ground floor chamber, lit by single windows on three sides, features round-arched embrasures that still show evidence of wicker-centring used during construction. Above the stone vault, the second floor served as the main private hall, featuring elegant twin-light ogee-headed windows with built-in seats and internal wooden shutters that still fit into their original rebates in the jamb stones.

By the time of the Civil Survey of 1654-6, Nodstown was described as ‘a small castle ye walls onely standinge’, accompanied by a thatched house, cottages, garden and orchard, with Walter Butler of Nodstown recorded as the proprietor in 1640. The castle’s later history saw it reduced to agricultural use; by the 19th century, the interior served as a cowhouse, whilst garden walls were added to the northeast and southeast corners. Today, despite 20th-century outhouses built against its western face, the tower house remains an exceptional example of Irish defensive architecture, complete with its murder hole, oubliette accessed through a trapdoor in the northern mural passage, and a two-storey vaulted tower containing what were likely the private residential chambers of the castle’s owners.