What remains today are the weathered foundations of a late sixteenth or early seventeenth-century fortified house that once rose three storeys high. The rocky platform on which it sits has been deliberately shaped, its edges scarped to create a more defensible position, with the grass-covered footings of a bawn wall still visible around its perimeter, surviving to about three-quarters of a metre in height.

The most substantial surviving feature is the remnants of a gatehouse in the southeast corner, which once protected the entrance to the bawn. This single-pile, two-roomed structure measured approximately 10 metres east to west and 4.5 metres north to south, built directly against the northern face of the southern bawn wall. Though now reduced to foundation level, these ruins tell the story of a fortified residence designed to control and defend its strategic position during the turbulent years following the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland.

By the time of the Civil Survey in 1654-6, the castle was already described as ‘a stumpe of an old castle without repayre’, suggesting it had fallen into ruin relatively quickly after its construction. Records indicate that John Morres held the property in 1640, just fourteen years before this rather bleak assessment was made. Today, these sparse remains serve as a quiet reminder of the uncertain times that saw the construction of numerous fortified houses across Ireland, many of which, like Castleleiny, enjoyed only brief periods of occupation before abandonment.