What visitors encounter today is a rectangular hall-keep with distinctive double vaulting over its ground floor, a structure that began life as a two-storey building before being transformed into a three-storey tower house during the fifteenth century. This modification speaks to the changing defensive needs and residential preferences of its inhabitants over time.

The Civil Survey of 1654-6 paints a picture of decline, describing ‘an old ruined Castle & bawne & three cottages’ on what was then known as ‘The Mannor & Lands of Bellagh Caple’. The survey records that in 1640, the townland was held by several proprietors including Richard Butler of Kilcash, along with Duncuan, Matthew, and Owen Butler, as well as Bryan Kenedy and Donogh Donoghow. These names reflect the complex patterns of land ownership that characterised seventeenth-century Ireland, with both Old English and Gaelic Irish families maintaining interests in the property.

Local tradition holds that fragments of the original bawn wall, the defensive perimeter that once protected the castle and its occupants, survive to the southwest of the tower house. Some of this ancient masonry has found new life, incorporated into the south gable end of a more recent house. The current landowner maintains that another section of wall, running east to west and featuring defensive loops, still exists on the property, though ivy has long since claimed it from easy view. These remnants hint at what was once a more substantial fortified complex, now reduced to tantalising fragments scattered across the farmyard.