This ivy-clad tower house, also known as the Friar’s Castle, appears on the Down Survey maps of 1655-6 and once formed part of the extensive temporal holdings of Graiguenamanagh Abbey, also called Duiske Abbey, from the early 13th century until Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in 1540. Just a hundred metres south of the castle lies a large medieval barn, known locally as the Friar’s Barn, further evidence of the religious community’s agricultural enterprises in this corner of County Kilkenny.

The rectangular four-storey tower measures approximately 12.4 metres north to south and 10 metres east to west, built from roughly coursed limestone rubble with larger blocks carefully placed at the corners. Its defensive features remain remarkably intact; visitors entering through the ground floor doorway would have passed beneath a murder hole, which could be accessed from the second floor above, whilst remnants of a machicolation still project from the external wall at second-floor level. The ground floor chamber, measuring 7.5 by 4.7 metres internally, contains three mural chambers tucked within the thick walls, each lit by a single narrow loop window and accessed through small lintelled doorways. Straight mural staircases in both the north and south walls lead upwards to the first floor, where a barrel vault once supported the chamber above.

The upper floors reveal the domestic arrangements of the castle’s inhabitants, with the second floor featuring a fireplace in the northwest corner, complete with a tapering flue and two loops in its back wall. An L-shaped mural chamber, accessed through a doorway in the window embrasure of the south wall, provided additional living space, whilst ivy now prevents access to the third floor where the staircase has collapsed. Historical maps from 1839 show another tower about 70 metres to the northwest, likely the corner tower of a bawn wall that once enclosed and protected the castle grounds, though no trace of this structure remains today.