The site’s earliest recorded structure appears in the Civil Survey of 1654-6, which describes ‘an old Castle thatcht with straw’ in ‘Tullaghmaine’, owned in 1640 by Richard Comyn, identified as an ‘Irish Papist’. This original fortification, modest enough to sport a thatched roof rather than stone battlements, had completely vanished by the Victorian era.

What stands today is actually a romantic reinvention, built between 1835 and 1838 by Mr. Maher to the designs of architect William Tinsley. According to the Ordnance Survey Letters from around 1840, this ‘modern dwelling house’ was constructed in deliberate imitation of an ancient castle’s style, possibly incorporating or standing upon the foundations of the original structure. The OS Letters note that whilst portions of the old castle walls had survived into living memory at that time, not a trace remained by 1840, making Maher’s Gothic Revival fantasy the sole inheritor of the site’s castellated tradition.

The building’s tumultuous history continued into the twentieth century when it was burnt during the turbulent 1920s, a period that saw many Irish country houses meet similar fates. Subsequently rebuilt, Tullamain Castle now stands as a testament to Ireland’s layered architectural history; a Victorian interpretation of medieval grandeur, itself restored after republican flames, occupying ground where a genuine, if humble, thatched castle once stood.