This modest two-storey tower house, measuring roughly 11.5 metres by 7.7 metres, represents a typical example of the fortified dwellings built by prosperous Irish families during the late medieval period. Though only its north and west walls survive to their full height, the castle’s thick walls, measuring 1.5 metres across, still convey the defensive strength these structures once possessed; complete with a windowless ground floor vault that now serves rather ignominiously as animal housing.

The castle’s history is intimately tied to the Shee family, prominent merchants who rose to considerable influence in Kilkenny during the 16th and 17th centuries. According to an Inquisition from 1619, Helias Shee, brother of Sir Richard Shee, held the castle and a third of the surrounding lands of “Folingrath otherwise Fowlingrath”. His son George maintained ownership until the Cromwellian conquest, when in 1653, as an “Irish Papist”, he forfeited Holdensrath along with the castles of Clonmoran and Shellumsrath. The property was subsequently divided between two Cromwellian soldiers, Overington Blunden and Captain Thomas Evans, marking the end of the Shee family’s tenure and the beginning of the castle’s slow decline.

An illustration from 1799 by Austin Cooper reveals details now lost to time, including a round-arched doorway in the south wall and defensive machicolations at parapet level from which defenders could drop stones or hot liquids on attackers below. The castle appears on both the Down Survey maps of 1655-6, testament to its local significance even as it transitioned from defensive stronghold to farm building. Today, visitors can still trace the line of the mural staircase in the eastern wall, though its original stone steps have been replaced with utilitarian concrete, and peer through the pointed arch embrasures that once framed windows, imagining the prosperous household that once controlled this strategic hillside position.