This fortification appears on the 1657 Down Survey map of Fore Barony, where it’s marked as a tower house castle in the townland of Ballintullagh, now known as Tullystown. According to the survey’s terrier, the castle and its lands belonged to James Nugent in 1641, an English Protestant landowner during a period when religious and political allegiances could determine one’s fortune or downfall.

The tower house itself is in poor condition, but its surrounding structures tell a more complete story of the site’s evolution through the centuries. To the west, a walled enclosure measuring roughly 60 by 62 metres served as a Victorian walled garden, though portions of its stonework appear significantly older. These ancient sections likely formed part of the original bawn wall that would have protected the tower house and its inhabitants. A second enclosure stretches to the south and southeast, its dimensions considerably larger at 40 by 110 metres, with walls that show clear evidence of Victorian repair work alongside much older masonry.

The site’s long history of reuse and adaptation is particularly evident in the nineteenth century farm buildings constructed against the northern wall of the southern enclosure. These structures incorporate fragments of dressed stone from earlier buildings, including a particularly noteworthy square headed slit window dating to the fifteenth or sixteenth century, carefully preserved and repurposed in one of the farm buildings. Such architectural recycling was common practice, transforming defensive structures into agricultural ones as Ireland’s political landscape shifted from medieval warfare to more peaceful pursuits.