Though nothing remains visible above ground today, this tower house once stood as a prominent feature of the medieval borough, positioned about 50 metres northeast of the village’s medieval church. The castle appears on both the 1655-6 Down Survey barony map of Gowran and the parish map of Dungarvan, where a terrier notes it as ‘a Small Castle in repaire’. In 1640, the property belonged to Peter Shortall, John Archdeacon and Redmond Archdeacon, local landowners of the period.

An invaluable 1799 sketch by antiquarian Austin Cooper provides our best glimpse of the castle’s appearance before its destruction. The drawing reveals a typical Irish tower house with its entrance facing northeast, featuring numerous defensive loops and a narrow window near the top. Cooper’s detailed observation shows intriguing architectural features, including what may have been a spiral staircase indicated by loops at the north corner, and a curious projecting feature at third floor level on the northwest wall, possibly a garderobe with direct outlet. The northwest wall rose notably higher than the others with a tall parapet, which Manning suggests could have been either the remains of a long caphouse similar to that at Ballysheanmore in Gowran, or simply evidence that the upper portions had been partially demolished.

By the time the first Ordnance Survey maps were drawn around 1840, the castle had already vanished from the landscape, marked only as ‘Site of Dungarvan Castle’. The structure appears to have been completely levelled sometime between Cooper’s 1799 sketch and the 1840s, leaving behind only historical records and artistic impressions to tell its story. Today, visitors to this quiet spot south of the Graiguenamanagh road will find no trace of the medieval stronghold that once commanded this position, though the nearby church ruins serve as a reminder of Dungarvan’s medieval past.