Though the castle itself has vanished, its dressed stones live on in the walls and buildings of the surrounding area, creating an architectural puzzle scattered across the landscape. The most likely location for the original fortress is a field known locally as ‘the haggard’, where a pile of rubble marks the remains of a post-medieval barn built entirely from the castle’s cut stone.

The castle’s history can be traced back to at least 1612, when Robert Dillon of Cannorstown was granted the property along with a bawn, thirty houses and a water mill. By 1659, the Down Survey depicted it as a tower house standing beside a medieval watermill on the west bank of the Tang River, with the lands belonging to Irish Catholics Henry and John Dillon. Today, fragments of the castle’s architectural features have been incorporated into unexpected places; a piece of what appears to be an ogee-headed window spandrel sits in the field’s boundary wall, whilst another similar fragment has found its way into the mill race of the nearby corn mill, which stands on the site of the original medieval watermill.

Perhaps the most intriguing remnant is a male exhibitionist figure, now cemented into the gate pillar of Ballycloghduff House’s entrance avenue, 90 metres west of the haggard field. This carved figure, along with punch-dressed stones dating to the 16th or 17th century, was salvaged from the castle ruins and given new life in the gate pier and mill race construction. While the castle itself may have disappeared, its stones continue to tell the story of this once-important stronghold, scattered like breadcrumbs across the modern landscape.