What survives is modest: a short stretch of grass-covered foundation measuring roughly four metres long, one and a half metres wide, and just over half a metre high, alongside two mounds of rubble hidden beneath the sod. Yet these unassuming remnants tell a remarkable story of medieval power struggles and centuries of stone recycling.

According to the historian O’Rorke, writing in 1878, this was once a MacDonagh castle built in 1408, though it may have stood on the site of an even earlier fortification. Local tradition suggests that ‘the Connaughtmen’ erected a castle here as early as 1124 to defend Connacht from attacks coming from Ulster; a strategic position that made perfect sense given its location near the confluence of two rivers. The MacDonaghs, a powerful Gaelic family in medieval Sligo, would have recognised the same strategic value when they built their stronghold nearly three centuries later.

The castle’s demise came not through siege or warfare but through a more mundane fate: architectural cannibalism. Much of the structure was dismantled and carted away to construct Lord Bellamont’s mansion in nearby Collooney. Whatever walls remained standing found new life as a ball alley in the nineteenth century, providing entertainment for locals until even these were knocked down and repurposed as building material for a bridge over the Unshin River. Today, visitors to this quiet field might never guess that beneath their feet lie the foundations of a fortress that once guarded the borders between two ancient provinces.