Sir Thomas Ridgeway constructed the original fortification between 1606 and 1613, creating an impressive stronghold complete with a bawn wall featuring turrets and flankers. Contemporary accounts from 1642 paint a picture of an idyllic setting, describing how the castle was ‘seated among woods in a place soe watered with springs’ that the Earl created fish ponds nearby, taking full advantage of the natural landscape.

The castle’s peaceful existence proved short-lived, however. Confederate forces under Preston seized it in 1642 during the Irish Confederate Wars, only for Cromwellian troops to capture and ultimately destroy it soon after. Today, visitors can still see the north gable of what was once a three-storey tower house, standing approximately 5.3 metres long and built from roughly coursed pink shaley stone with dressed limestone quoins. Gun loops are visible on the ground and first floors, whilst a large window opening marks the second floor; short returns on the east and west sides hint at the building’s original footprint.

The Dunne family attempted to resurrect the site in 1680, constructing a new castle that, curiously, was never inhabited. Of the original bawn wall that once encircled and protected the complex, only a 4.3-metre fragment survives on the western face, now incorporated into later 18th or 19th century demesne walls that extend from both the east and west of the tower house ruins. A round arch to the northwest of the tower house adds another layer to this archaeological puzzle, standing as a silent witness to centuries of Irish history, conflict, and abandonment.