Richard Clifford’s castle here was destroyed by 1596, and whilst the nearby turlough appears on the Strafford map from around 1636, the castle itself had already vanished from record. Sir Charles Coote later held a quarter of land here, comprising 72 acres, but the castle’s military importance had clearly ended. Today, what remains sits at the bottom of a north-facing slope, right at the southern edge of an east-west running turlough, those seasonal lakes so characteristic of the Irish limestone landscape.

The site now consists of a rectangular grass-covered cairn measuring 19 metres north to south and 14 metres east to west, rising between 0.2 and 1.2 metres in height. Within this cairn, the outlines of two chambers, each roughly 6 by 5 metres, can still be traced through grass-covered banks about 2.5 metres wide, with occasional glimpses of the original wall faces breaking through the vegetation. This central structure occupies the northwestern corner of what was once a substantial defensive enclosure.

The enclosure itself forms an impressive sub-rectangular earthwork, stretching 63.3 metres north to south and 45.3 metres east to west. It’s defined by an earthen bank that varies between 4.5 and 5.7 metres in width, standing 0.1 to 0.3 metres high on the interior side and considerably higher, between 0.6 and 1.4 metres, on the exterior. An outer fosse, or defensive ditch, runs along the north, east and southwest sides, measuring 5 to 6 metres across at the top and narrowing to about 1.5 metres at its base, with depths ranging from just 0.1 metres at the north to 0.7 metres at the east. From the southwest to northwest, this fosse gives way to a drainage channel about 5 metres wide. The main entrance, 6 metres wide, pierces the centre of the southern side, offering access to what was once a formidable defensive position.