Built between 1420 and 1440 by either Mahon or Rory MacNamara, this early tower house represents one of the county’s older fortifications, constructed atop an even earlier earthwork or fort. The castle’s history reflects the turbulent politics of medieval Ireland; by 1563 it had passed into the hands of Connor O’Brien, 3rd Earl of Thomond, before returning to MacNamara ownership in the 1570s. Its strategic importance waned around 1710 when Maryfort House was built roughly 570 metres to the northeast, marking the shift from defensive architecture to more comfortable Georgian living.

Today, what remains is a rectangular structure measuring approximately 10.85 metres northeast to southwest and 7.5 metres northwest to southeast, with walls surviving only to ground floor level at a maximum height of 1.8 metres. The rubble limestone walls, between 1.5 and 1.8 metres thick, show evidence of extensive stone robbing, particularly along the northeast side and at the northern and eastern corners. The southwest wall preserves the best examples of the original construction, including an external base batter with roughly squared facing stones. The main entrance in the northeast wall leads through a narrow lobby flanked by a small guardroom to the northwest and a spiral staircase to the southeast that would have climbed clockwise to upper floors now lost.

The ground floor’s main living space, a rectangular room measuring 5.75 by 3.8 metres, features the remains of two opposing window embrasures in the northwest and southeast walls. These windows, with straight ingoings extending 1.3 metres into the walls, would have provided both light and defensive positions, though their lights have long since disappeared. Large chunks of fallen masonry rest at various points around the structure, whilst thorn trees and briars have colonised both the interior and exterior, effectively camouflaging these medieval remains from the surrounding landscape. Despite its ruined state, the castle offers tangible evidence of the sophisticated defensive architecture employed by Gaelic lords in fifteenth century Clare, built at a time when such structures served as both family homes and symbols of territorial control.