When surveyors documented the property in 1654-56, they found it in the hands of Thomas Mc Edmond Peirs, an Irish Catholic landowner who held the estate in 1640. Even then, the structures were already in poor condition; the survey describes “an old broken house with two chimneys, two cabins, & an old butt of a castle, not valuable”, with an annual rent to the Crown of £3.3.9.

The castle ruins, marked rather prosaically as a disused lime kiln on later Ordnance Survey maps, took on a more humble role in local memory as kennels for hunting hounds. When local historian John Pierse examined the site some years ago, he discovered the footprint of a roughly rectangular structure measuring approximately 13 metres by 2 metres, with a square tower at its southern end. This tower, measuring 2.6 by 4.5 metres and standing 4.5 metres tall, still contained traces of its original staircase; about ten stone steps, varying between 0.3 and 0.8 metres in length, though these have since been filled in for safety reasons.

Today, these fragmentary remains offer a glimpse into the gradual transformation of Ireland’s medieval landscape, where fortified homes of minor gentry slowly crumbled into agricultural buildings and animal shelters. The site at Meenogahane represents countless similar stories across rural Ireland, where castles that once symbolised local power and prestige quietly faded into the practical needs of farming communities, their stones repurposed and their histories preserved mainly in land surveys and local folklore.