Where the fortress once stood, marked confidently on old Ordnance Survey maps from the 19th century, there’s now just a flat platform of rock about 26 metres long and 18 metres wide. Someone has piled clay on top to create a garden, and the town itself spreads out on the level ground to the south.

Archaeological testing in 2002 revealed how thoroughly the area has been transformed over the centuries. When developers excavated behind the Carrig Rua Hotel, close to where the castle would have stood, they found nothing but modern fill, imported beach sand, and the remains of a Victorian outhouse that had been demolished in the 1980s. The eight test trenches dug for the new hotel development uncovered bright orange boulder clay, schist bedrock, and evidence of the various ways the land had been levelled and built upon since the castle’s disappearance.

The complete absence of any medieval remains is striking; not a single stone or fragment survived the centuries of development that transformed this strategic spot into the heart of modern Dunfanaghy. The castle’s existence is now purely a matter of historical record and old maps, a ghost fortress that left no physical footprint on the landscape it once commanded.