In 1646, the Irish Confederate general Owen Roe O’Neill marched his forces from Ballyshean to capture this strategic stronghold, then likely held by the Barrington family. After taking the castle, O’Neill showed unexpected leniency to its captain and installed his own garrison, marking another chapter in the complex military campaigns of the period.

The ruins that survive today tell the story of a substantial four-storey fortified house built from roughly coursed limestone rubble, with larger stones carefully placed at the corners for added strength. Though only the north gable wall and fragments of the east and west walls remain standing, the structure was originally protected by an impressive defensive system. A bawn wall, measuring about a metre thick, enclosed the house and was fortified with angle towers at its corners; originally there may have been four such towers, each with interior dimensions of roughly 2.5 by 1.9 metres. Today, visitors can still see portions of the south wall, remnants of the southeast corner tower with its small rectangular openings facing north and east, and two later rectangular towers that appear to have been built on the site of the original southwest corner tower.

The location was clearly chosen with defence in mind, offering commanding views across the countryside from north-northeast to south, with clear sightlines to Dysart Hill, Gallows Hill, and Fossy Hill. The Barringtons, who acquired extensive estates in Cullenagh barony, later built a castellated mansion on the Black Mountain slope, though this too now lies in ruins. The fortified house’s remains now stand within the garden of a 19th-century house, and archaeological evidence suggests additional structures once stood outside the bawn area to the southeast, including a small building whose west and south walls can still be traced.