The Civil Survey of 1654-6 records that Richard Keatinge, identified as an ‘Irish Papist’, owned this land in 1640, where a castle stood within a bawn; a defensive stone wall that enclosed and protected the tower house and its immediate grounds. Today, visitors can trace the limestone rubble walls of this bawn, which measures approximately 59 metres north to south and 30 metres east to west, positioned dramatically on the western edge of a limestone outcrop with a sharp drop immediately to the west.

The tower house occupies the northwest corner of the complex, though centuries of decay make it difficult to determine exactly how it connected to the bawn walls. The defensive enclosure may have been built directly against the tower house walls, or the bawn might have had to angle inward to meet the structure at both its northern and western points. The southern section of the bawn remains the best preserved, with its rubble limestone wall still standing despite several breaches, including a significant gap at its eastern end. The eastern wall rises to about three metres in height at its southern end, surviving intact for nearly 20 metres before deteriorating into a low mound of collapsed stone.

Archaeological details reveal the construction techniques of these Anglo-Norman fortifications; the walls measure roughly 0.9 metres thick and feature possible put-log holes, which would have supported scaffolding during construction, visible about 1.8 metres above ground level on the western wall. A stone string-course runs along the interior top of the bawn walls, topped with splayed coping stones that would have helped shed rainwater and provided a finished edge to the defensive structure. While the northern wall has largely collapsed into rubble and ivy obscures parts of the tower house, the surviving sections offer a remarkable glimpse into how landed families like the Keatinges fortified their estates during a turbulent period in Irish history.