According to records from the Ordnance Survey Letters compiled by O’Flanagan in 1927, this medieval stronghold once stood prominent enough to lend its name to the entire townland. Today, however, not a single stone remains visible above ground where the castle once commanded the landscape.

The site itself falls within what archaeologists have catalogued as enclosure GA086-075, though visitors searching for romantic ruins will find only empty fields. The castle’s disappearance isn’t entirely mysterious; local knowledge passed down through generations tells us that its stones found new life in the 19th century. When the owners of Woodlawn House, roughly 1.5 kilometres to the northeast, decided to build a gate lodge for their estate, they apparently saw the abandoned castle as a convenient quarry.

This practice of recycling medieval stonework for later building projects was remarkably common across Ireland, where practicality often trumped preservation. The transformation of Caislean na binne from defensive fortress to decorative gate lodge represents countless similar stories scattered throughout the Irish countryside, where the bones of old castles live on in farmhouse walls, field boundaries, and estate buildings. While the physical castle has vanished, its presence lingers in the place name itself; a ghostly reminder of the medieval landscape that once shaped this corner of Galway.