This defensive wall once protected a circular tower house that served as the seat of the Shortall family until they forfeited it during the Cromwellian conquest. According to the historian Carrigan, writing in 1905, Edmund Butler, brother of Lord Galmoy, took up residence here in the 17th century before meeting his end at the Battle of Aughrim in 1691.

Today, only a 38-metre stretch of the bawn wall survives, positioned about 40 metres east-southeast of the tower house and running in a north-northeast to south-southwest direction. Built from roughly coursed rubble and incorporating some sizeable boulders, the wall stands nearly three metres high on its exterior face and measures just under a metre thick. Three square putlog holes, spaced 11 to 15 metres apart, pierce the wall at roughly two metres above ground level; these would have once held horizontal timbers during construction. At its southern end, the wall turns at a right angle and continues northwestward for about 10 metres, though this section has largely collapsed into rubble and butts against the ruins of a 19th-century outbuilding.

The 1839 Ordnance Survey map shows this wall extending southward from what was then a range of east-west outbuildings, though these structures had vanished by the 1900 revision. Whilst Carrigan questioned whether the circular tower house was substantial enough to be the main castle, it displays all the characteristic features of a tower house and, together with its protective bawn, formed a formidable defensive complex that controlled this strategic position overlooking the valley.