What began as a late sixteenth or early seventeenth-century tower house has grown into a complex that tells the story of changing times and tastes. The original four-storey tower, built from roughly coursed sandstone with limestone details, was already noted in the Civil Survey of 1654-6 as a ‘castle in repayre’, owned by Richard Butler. This sturdy structure, measuring approximately 13 metres by 10 metres, would later become just one element in a much grander scheme.

The tower house itself reveals layers of history in its very walls. Its original defensive features include a murder hole protecting the entrance lobby, spiral stairs tucked into the western angle, and a distinctive angled bartizan projecting from the third floor to guard the main entrance below. Many of the original windows, flat-headed singles and doubles with hood mouldings, survive best on the northeast face, whilst the northwest façade was completely transformed in the eighteenth century with elegant rectangular windows and decorative blind oculi with brick surrounds. The modifications tell their own story; a breach between the ground and first floors shows where later inhabitants created access to connect the tower with subsequent additions, whilst an external fireplace was cleverly inserted into what became an interior wall.

Perhaps the most impressive feature is the unusually large bawn wall that encloses the complex, stretching 76 metres by 137 metres and standing up to 7 metres high in places. This formidable defensive perimeter, built directly on bedrock, bristles with gun loops at multiple levels, with a particular concentration of sixteen horizontal loops along the northern section. The wall incorporates several entrances from different periods, including original gateways in the southeast and northwest walls, an eighteenth-century entrance, and a charming round-headed pedestrian doorway. A corner bartizan once protected the northwest angle, whilst a projecting tower midway along the southwest wall provided additional defensive capability. These walls have witnessed the castle’s transformation from a Butler stronghold to its eventual incorporation into an elaborate H-plan mansion, complete with eighteenth-century landscaping that raised and reshaped portions of the interior courtyard.