The fortified house was built by John Reynolds, one of the first of the Mac Raghnall clan to anglicise his surname, sometime after he received a substantial land grant of over 2,000 acres as the manor of Lough Scur in 1621-22. Reynolds, who earned the rather grim nickname Seán na gCeann (John of the Heads), likely built the house as part of his cooperation with government schemes to settle Leitrim; a strategic move that helped him escape the control of the powerful O’Rourke lords who dominated the region.

The rectangular three-storey house, measuring 14 metres east to west and 6.25 metres north to south, has stood as a roofless ruin since at least 1797. Despite centuries of abandonment and a thick covering of ivy, the structure remains remarkably intact, missing only its eastern gable. The building originally featured five bays with rectangular windows, though the dressed stone has long since disappeared, leaving only fragments of square hood-moulding visible. A semi-circular stair tower projects from the centre of the north wall, complete with defensive gun-loops, whilst the remains of fireplaces can still be traced in both gables and the north wall. The central doorway in the south wall has collapsed, but earthen banks to the south suggest the locations of former outhouses, and a 9-metre-wide roadway still approaches from that direction.

The house appears on the Down Survey maps of 1656-58 alongside a watchtower on nearby Prison Island, about 150 metres to the northwest. By the time of Humphry Reynolds’ will in 1660, the estate comprised 20 cartrons or townlands, though curiously the house itself receives no mention in that document. Today, this atmospheric ruin serves as a tangible reminder of the plantation era in Leitrim and the complex political manoeuvring of Gaelic families who chose to work within the new English system rather than against it.