The site began its documented history in 1611 when Tirlagh Roe O’Boyle received a substantial land grant of 2,000 acres in the barony of Kilmacrenan. By 1619, O’Boyle had established himself here with what was described as ‘a good bawn and a house of lime and stone’, though his fortunes would soon change. After mortgaging the property to John Stanton and losing it following the 1641 rebellion, the lands passed through several hands before William Wray’s family took residence around 1670, having purchased the estate from Hugh Hamil in 1700.

The surviving ruins comprise an impressive five-bay, three-storey house with attic accommodation, set within a rectangular bawn measuring approximately 34 by 29 metres internally. The bawn walls, constructed from split stone and rubble laid in mortar with remarkably fine jointing, originally featured four corner towers with salient angles. Today, the western and southern walls stand tallest, still crowned with their distinctive rounded crenellations and pierced with numerous gun-loops for defence. The main entrance through the south wall preserves its stop-chamfered jamb and the remnants of a four-centred arch, complete with a substantial draw-bar socket that once secured the gate. Interestingly, the site shows evidence of multiple building phases; the bawn likely dates to O’Boyle’s early 17th-century construction, whilst the house ruins visible today appear to be a later addition, possibly built when the Wrays established themselves there in the latter half of the century.

By the 18th century, the house had been abandoned and appeared on Taylor and Skinner’s 1778 maps simply as ‘Castle Ruins’. The archaeological survey reveals fascinating details about the settlement’s domestic arrangements, including drainage systems with flagstone-covered channels running from the house, secondary structures built against the bawn’s interior walls, and field names that hint at the estate’s former grandeur, with areas still known as ‘the kitchen garden’ and ‘the orchard’. The varying ground levels across the site, with deliberate raising of the earth within the bawn particularly on the southeast side, demonstrate the careful planning that went into creating this fortified residence, a tangible reminder of the turbulent period when Irish landowners, English settlers, and Scottish planters vied for control of Donegal’s fertile lands.