The site appears on the Down Survey maps of 1655-6, both in the barony map of Gowran and the parish map of Blackrath and St Martins, where it’s marked simply as ‘Lavistown’. These detailed surveys, commissioned by Oliver Cromwell to redistribute Irish lands, provide a snapshot of the castle when it was still a functioning structure.

The accompanying terrier for the parish map offers a tantalising glimpse of the castle’s condition in the mid-17th century, describing ‘on Lavistowne a Castle in repaire’ and noting that Thomas Denn held the property in 1640. This suggests the fortification was still habitable and maintained during a particularly turbulent period in Irish history, when many such structures were falling into ruin or being deliberately slighted during the Confederate Wars.

By the early 20th century, local historian William Carrigan recorded that only a small fragment of Lavistown castle survived, having been pragmatically repurposed into the walls of one of Edward Langton’s outbuildings. This practice of incorporating castle stonework into later agricultural buildings was common across Ireland, where dressed stone from medieval and early modern structures provided ready building material for farms and estates. Today, these incorporated fragments serve as subtle reminders of the defensive architecture that once dotted the Kilkenny landscape.