The site makes clever use of the natural topography, with steep slopes falling away to the south, west and north providing natural defences, whilst the level ground extending eastward likely marks where a small bailey once stood; the enclosed courtyard where daily life would have unfolded for the castle’s inhabitants.

The motte itself is an impressive earthwork, forming a circular mound roughly 45 metres across and rising between five and seven metres high. Its flat summit, measuring about 18 metres in diameter, would have originally supported a wooden tower or keep. A distinctive feature of this particular motte is the five-metre-wide berm, or level platform, that runs around the southern, western and northern sides. Along the northern edge, you can still make out faint traces of what appears to be a three-metre-wide defensive ditch that once ran inside this berm.

The eastern side of the motte shows signs of later disturbance, where a narrow quarry has been cut into the earthwork with the excavated material dumped to the north. Despite this damage, the castle remains a striking example of Anglo-Norman military architecture in Ireland, representing the type of fortification that helped establish and maintain control over newly conquered territories during the medieval period.