Where farm sheds, concrete yards and cattle pens now sprawl across a low pasture ridge, an old castle once commanded this modest elevation. The Ordnance Survey Letters from 2002 record the site’s complete erasure, noting simply that whilst a castle once stood here, ‘none of which remains’. The only architectural survivor from the medieval period is a church, situated roughly 60 metres to the west south west, which continues to mark this landscape’s ancient significance.

The castle was most likely a tower house, that distinctly Irish form of fortified residence favoured by the gentry from the 15th century onwards. These vertical strongholds, typically three to six storeys high, served as both defensive structures and comfortable homes for families establishing their authority across the Irish countryside. The Fitzgeralds, one of Ireland’s most powerful Anglo-Norman dynasties, appear to have held sway here; their connection to Dunfierth survives in an intriguing archaeological footnote rather than in stone and mortar.

During the 1980s, local farmers discovered a carved stone amongst the ruins, decorated with the figure of a monkey. This curious find, subsequently sold and lost to historical record, may have formed part of a Fitzgerald coat of arms; the family famously incorporated exotic animals into their heraldic designs across their various Irish estates. Such decorative stones often adorned the entranceways or great halls of tower houses, proclaiming the owner’s lineage and status to all who entered. Today, this narrow ridge running north to south through Kildare’s farmland holds its secrets beneath the practical infrastructure of modern agriculture, its medieval past glimpsed only through fragments of carved stone and the enduring presence of its neighbouring church.