Though invisible above ground today, historical records paint a vivid picture of this fortification’s role in one of the area’s most dramatic sieges. The Civil Survey of 1654-6 documented ‘the walles of a Castle … and a bawne about them’, confirming the presence of this defensive structure that would have enclosed a courtyard around the tower house.

The bawn’s military significance became brutally apparent during the 1641 siege of Rochestown, a six-week ordeal that tested the fortification’s strength. The attacking forces employed a ‘sow’, a mobile siege engine designed to protect soldiers as they approached enemy walls, to breach the bawn’s defences. According to contemporary accounts, they successfully ‘brought a sow to the bawn wall, broke it down and approached the castle wall’, demonstrating both the tactical importance of the bawn as an outer defence and the sophisticated siege warfare techniques of 17th-century Ireland.

Today, visitors to Rochestown will find no visible trace of the bawn that once encircled the tower house, though its presence is well documented in historical surveys. The site serves as a reminder of how Ireland’s turbulent past is often hidden beneath the modern landscape, with only archival records and archaeological evidence revealing the full extent of these once-formidable fortifications. The compilation of this historical data by Jean Farrelly in February 2014 helps preserve the memory of this lost defensive structure and its role in one of Tipperary’s most significant historical conflicts.