Though nothing remains visible at ground level today, this location holds centuries of Irish history beneath its grass-covered surface. The first Ordnance Survey map from 1840 marked this spot as a ‘Castle’, whilst by the 1904-05 edition, it had already become a ‘Castle (site of)’, suggesting the structure had disappeared sometime during those intervening decades.

The most intriguing historical reference comes from the Civil Survey of 1654-6, which describes ‘an old castle within an old Bawne’ at this location. A bawn was a defensive wall that surrounded and protected tower houses and castles in medieval and early modern Ireland, typically enclosing a courtyard where cattle could be secured during raids. The fact that both the castle and its protective bawn were already described as ‘old’ in the mid-17th century suggests these fortifications may have dated back to the late medieval period or earlier.

Today, visitors to this pastoral landscape would find it difficult to imagine the imposing stone structures that once stood here. The castle and its defensive walls have been completely reclaimed by the land, leaving only historical records and maps to tell their story. This disappearance of such substantial buildings is not uncommon across the Irish countryside, where centuries of stone robbing for new construction, natural decay, and agricultural improvement have erased many physical traces of the island’s turbulent past.