In 1573, Sir John Perrot identified this location, tucked between two ridges in the Glen of Aherlow, as a key defensive position that needed fortification to prevent rebels from taking refuge in the surrounding Aherlow woods. By the time of the Civil Survey in 1654–6, the site housed “an old brocken castle” in the townlands of Clonebigg and Ballynacourty, which had been owned by Sir John Magrath of Allevollane, described in the records as an “Irish Papist”, in 1640.

The original castle eventually gave way to Ballynacourty House, a sprawling residence that appears to have evolved over multiple periods, likely incorporating elements of the earlier fortification into its structure. Contemporary sketches suggest the house was an architectural patchwork, bearing the marks of its long and varied history. Unfortunately, the house met a violent end when it was burnt during the tumultuous 1920s and subsequently levelled around 1940, erasing a significant piece of local heritage from the landscape.

Today, only the stable yard remains standing, having been given new life as bed and breakfast accommodation. Keen observers can still spot traces of the site’s past glory; blocks of dressed stone are visible in the walls surrounding the stables, whilst chamfered dressed stone appears in the rubble built boundary wall along the road front, silent witnesses to the grand structures that once stood here. Though the house itself is gone, these architectural fragments and the surviving outbuildings continue to connect visitors to the layers of history embedded in this corner of County Tipperary.