The site at Castlelake centres around what was once a fortified tower house with its protective bawn, a type of defensive wall that surrounded many Irish castles. When surveyors documented the area in the 1650s during Cromwell’s Civil Survey, they noted ‘an old castle a thatcht house with a Bawne about it’, giving us a rare glimpse into how the structure appeared in the mid-17th century.

The townland’s history reveals the complex religious and political tensions of early modern Ireland. In 1640, the area was known as Ballytarsny-Mckeorish and belonged to Edward Boyton, an alderman from Cashel who was recorded as an ‘Irish Papist’; a reminder of the period when Catholic landowners still held significant properties before the upheavals of the Confederate Wars and subsequent Cromwellian settlement. The original tower house has since been incorporated into an 18th-century mansion, which itself became part of a larger distillery complex, showing how these defensive structures were adapted and repurposed as Ireland’s economy and society evolved.

Today, visitors can still see the high stone walls that enclose the site, though these appear to date from the 18th-century renovations rather than the original medieval bawn. This layering of different periods; medieval fortress, Georgian house, and industrial distillery; makes Castlelake a fascinating example of how Irish historical sites often represent not just one era but multiple chapters of the island’s past, each generation building upon and transforming what came before.