Castle, Castletown, Co. Laois
In the countryside near Castletown in County Laois stands a solitary gable wall, all that remains of what was once known as Cody's Castle.
Castle, Castletown, Co. Laois
This limestone tower house, which stood almost perfectly intact as recently as 1800, has since been reduced to a single southeastern wall measuring roughly 8.4 metres wide and rising three storeys high. The surviving fragment offers tantalising glimpses of the building’s original construction: a wall thickness of about 1.25 metres, a slight inward slope at the base for added stability, and traces of what was once the main entrance near the eastern end of the gable.
The architectural details that remain hint at the castle’s former grandeur. A segmental pointed arch window can still be made out towards the southern end of the wall, whilst evidence suggests the ground floor was once covered by a north-south barrel vault; a common defensive feature in Irish tower houses. The castle originally stood within a raised, enclosed area surrounded by a bawn wall, though only scattered foundations of this protective barrier are now visible to the west. Historical accounts describe the structure as being “30 or 40 feet high” with walls “eleven feet thick at the ground”, dimensions that align closely with what survives today.
Local historian Carrigan’s documentation from 1905 proves invaluable in understanding the site’s decline, noting that whilst the castle remained “almost perfect” in 1800, most of it had already been destroyed by the time of his writing. The rapid deterioration of this once-formidable structure over the course of the 19th century serves as a stark reminder of how quickly Ireland’s built heritage can disappear when left unprotected. Today, this lonely gable wall stands as both a monument to medieval defensive architecture and a poignant symbol of architectural loss in the Irish landscape.





