Though no stones or earthworks survive today, we know of its existence thanks to cartographic evidence from the early 19th century. The castle appears clearly marked on Larkin’s 1808 map of County Westmeath, now preserved in the National Library of Ireland’s manuscript collection (MS 46,580).

The complete disappearance of this fortification raises intriguing questions about its construction and fate. It may have been a tower house typical of the Irish midlands, built during the late medieval period when local lords needed defendable residences, or perhaps an earlier Anglo-Norman structure. Without archaeological investigation, we can only speculate whether it was deliberately demolished for building materials, abandoned and left to decay, or destroyed during one of Ireland’s many conflicts.

Garrynafela’s lost castle serves as a reminder that Ireland’s historical landscape contains many ghost structures; buildings that existed long enough to be recorded on maps but vanished before modern documentation could capture their details. These phantom sites, known only through old surveys and estate papers, represent countless untold stories of the families who built them, lived in them, and ultimately abandoned them to time and weather.