The castle’s early days were intertwined with the Synnott family; Sir James Synnott, brother of Sir Richard of nearby Ballybrennan Castle, is believed to have married into the Lambert family of Lingstown. By 1630, when Edmond Synnott died, he held 80 acres at Lingstown, though the Book of Survey and Distribution tells a different story for 1640, recording John Devereux with 27 acres and Alexander Rossiter with 73 acres in the area. The castle appeared on the Down Survey barony map of 1656-8, marking its continued significance in the local landscape.

When antiquarian John O’Donovan surveyed the castle around 1840, he recorded its dimensions as roughly 7.9 metres by 7 metres, rising to an impressive height of about 13.4 metres. The structure was a classic example of Irish tower house architecture, with its entrance on the north wall featuring a pointed arch of dressed stone, likely defended by a portcullis, machicolation, and murder hole positioned towards the western end. The interior layout was typical of such fortifications: stairs within the north wall led to the first floor beneath an east-west vault and continued to the second floor, whilst a spiral staircase at the northeast corner provided access to the third and fourth floors, eventually reaching the battlements.

The castle’s defensive and domestic features included gables on both the north and south walls, with an attic entrance on the northern side. A chimney stack rose above the stepped battlements on the north, and a lookout platform crowned the stair housing at the northeast corner, allowing defenders to survey the surrounding marshlands and waterways. Sadly, this centuries-old sentinel collapsed in 1985, leaving only a pile of rubble where the tower once stood. Today, photographs, sketches, and local memories preserved in archaeological records are all that remain to tell the story of this once-proud fortification that watched over Tacumshin Lough for more than four hundred years.