What remains is a D-shaped area of scrub and rock, roughly 18 by 15 metres, where scattered fragments of masonry hint at the structure that once stood here. Among the rubble, you can still spot remnants of a barrel vault and the corner of what was once a room; substantial pieces that measure up to three metres long and two metres wide. The site appears to have been truncated at its southwestern edge, possibly representing the remains of a defensive bawn with a fosse, whilst a later field wall now cuts across its western boundary.

The castle’s history reads like a microcosm of Irish territorial disputes during the Tudor conquest. The O’Brien family held Bunakippaun until 1586, when English forces seized it and promptly leased it to Thomas Cheyny, then John Bealinge; a common pattern of dispossession that played out across Ireland. By 1613, the castle was already in ruins according to historical records, though local tradition keeps its memory alive with a more romantic tale. Legend has it that when Irish soldiers retreated past Bunakippaun following their defeat at the Battle of Aughrim in 1691, the castle’s residents threw their valuables into a nearby lake rather than see them fall into enemy hands.

Today, visitors to the site will find little more than that rocky outcrop and those weathered stone fragments, though a covered well survives about 55 metres to the southeast. Next to the well lies an old quarry, overgrown but still visible at 15 metres long and 3 metres deep, which likely provided the stone for the castle’s original construction. The Ordnance Survey maps from 1842 and 1920 still marked it as “Bunakippaun Castle (in ruins)”, preserving its place in the landscape long after its walls had crumbled.