Built around 1525 by Pierce Ruadh Butler, Earl of Ormond, who died in 1539, the castle’s construction date has been confirmed through dendrochronological analysis of its original oak timbers. The five-storey rectangular tower, measuring 9.3 metres north to south and 6.5 metres east to west internally, stands in the southeast corner of its associated bawn. Its walls of roughly coursed limestone rubble feature dressed quoins, including one particularly notable carved stone at the southwest angle: a sheela-na-gig, that enigmatic female figure found on medieval buildings across Ireland.

The castle’s defensive features reveal the turbulent times in which it was built. A pointed entrance doorway on the ground floor’s north wall is protected by both an external machicolation at parapet level and an internal murder-hole in the entrance lobby’s ceiling, with a cross-loop in the opposite wall providing additional coverage. The tower’s spiral staircase, rising from the east end of the entrance lobby and lit by flat-headed loops, connects all five floors whilst providing access to various mural chambers along the way. These include guard rooms, garderobe chambers, and most intriguingly, a small chamber on the fourth floor containing a rectangular shaft that drops down to an oubliette; a grim reminder of the castle’s darker purposes. At the top of the tower, the crenellated parapet and wall-walk remain partially intact, with a lookout platform above the stair caphouse traditionally known as ‘Mairgread nhee Gearoid’s chair’, named after Pierce Ruadh’s wife.

After passing through various hands, including Richard Butler, first Lord Mountgarret, and eventually being granted to Lieutenant Arthur St George following the Cromwellian confiscations, the castle has seen continuous occupation and modification over nearly five centuries. Victorian and Edwardian alterations included the widening of windows and insertion of fireplaces, whilst a 19th-century farmhouse was built adjoining the east face, apparently incorporating part of an earlier gabled building. Following a late 20th-century re-roofing, the Irish Landmark Trust leased and refurbished the tower as a holiday rental property, breathing new life into this exceptional example of Irish tower house architecture. A circular stone-lined well immediately west of the tower and the remains of the bawn walls complete this atmospheric medieval complex.