The castle first appears on historical records in the Down Survey map of 1656-59, where it’s marked as ‘a Castle in repaire’ on lands belonging to Henry McGawley. Just north of the castle lay a body of water known as Loch Luatha, which would eventually lend its name to the entire parish of Ballyloughloe.

By the time the Ordnance Survey mapped the area in 1837, the castle was already in ruins; antiquarian John O’Donovan noted that only a single vault remained of the once substantial structure. The building appears on that year’s six-inch map, standing northwest of what was then called Mount Temple Old House, but by the 1910 revision of the twenty-five-inch map, even these remnants had vanished, replaced by the rather forlorn notation ‘Castle Site of’.

Today, visitors to the site would find no trace of the medieval stronghold. A 1982 archaeological inspection revealed that the location, situated near Mount Temple village and northwest of a Norman motte, had been transformed into a working farmyard atop a natural knoll. While some earthwork ridges remain visible in the eastern fields, these don’t extend to where the castle once stood, leaving only historical maps and documents to tell the story of this lost piece of Westmeath’s medieval heritage.