The castle sits within an even older promontory fort, though today only a fragment of the northern wall survives, stretching about 3.7 metres along the edge of the defensive fosse. At the northeastern corner, you can still make out what appears to be the remnants of a spiral staircase tucked inside a round turret.

When antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp visited in 1909, considerably more of the castle remained standing. He documented a three-storey structure with thick, sloping walls and a raised northern entrance that featured a defensive murder hole in the porch above. The ground floor housed a vaulted porter’s lodge lit by two narrow, splayed windows, whilst the spiral staircase led to the first floor before changing direction towards the northwest corner. The second floor was supported by plain, rounded corbels, topped with a somewhat rounded vault that had been constructed using wicker centering; a medieval building technique where flexible branches formed temporary supports for the stonework above.

Even by Westropp’s time, the castle was already showing significant decay. An earlier visitor, Hickson, had noted a side wall extending along the fosse in 1841, but this had vanished completely by 1909. Today, the deterioration has advanced so far that no trace remains of the windows, doors, floors, or vaults that Westropp so carefully recorded. What little survives of Browne’s Castle serves as a haunting reminder of how quickly our built heritage can crumble when left to the elements, taking with it the stories of pirates, defenders, and the medieval masons who shaped these stones centuries ago.