The site occupies gently rolling pastureland with commanding views across the surrounding landscape, a strategic position that would have been carefully chosen by its builders. Today, scrub vegetation has claimed much of the earthwork, whilst an old field boundary runs across part of the structure, marking centuries of agricultural use since the castle fell into ruin.

The monument consists of two distinct but connected elements that are classic features of Norman military architecture. The main defensive structure is a conical mound, or motte, measuring 38 metres in diameter and rising nearly 5 metres high. Its flat summit, spanning 18 metres north to south and 13 metres east to west, would have once supported a wooden tower or keep where the lord and his garrison could retreat during attacks. Attached to the western side of this mound lies a roughly rectangular platform; the bailey; which measures 26 metres east to west and 32 metres north to south. This lower courtyard area is defined by a scarped edge approximately 8 metres wide and 2.5 metres high, creating a defended space where everyday castle life would have unfolded.

These earthwork castles were the Normans’ rapid response to controlling newly conquered territories in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Built quickly using local labour and materials, they could be erected in a matter of weeks or months, allowing the invaders to establish a network of strongholds across the Irish landscape. Whilst the wooden structures that once crowned these earthworks have long since vanished, the impressive mounds and platforms they left behind continue to shape the Irish countryside, silent witnesses to a turbulent period when two cultures collided and the political map of Ireland was redrawn.