The motte, essentially the castle’s main defensive mound, forms a D-shaped platform roughly 15 by 14 metres across. It’s defined by an earthen bank that rises just 30 centimetres on the inside but an impressive 1.55 metres on the outside, with the bank positioned atop a steep natural slope that amplifies its defensive height. On its straight side, facing northwest to northeast, a dramatic scarp drops away nearly 4 metres, creating a formidable barrier that would have challenged any medieval attacker.

Immediately to the north lies the bailey, the castle’s enclosed courtyard where daily life would have unfolded. This roughly oval space, measuring about 37 by 33 metres, is surrounded by its own defensive earthworks: an earthen bank standing 2.5 metres high on the outside, a fosse (defensive ditch) at its base spanning 2.4 metres wide, and traces of a counterscarp bank visible along the northeast to north sections. A possible entrance appears at the southwest corner, where a 4-metre-wide curving ramp cuts through the defences. Today, both the motte summit and the gently undulating bailey interior lie peacefully under grass, though the southwest to west-northwest section of the fosse has been partially obscured by the wall of an adjacent graveyard.

This fortification wasn’t alone in the medieval landscape; about 250 metres east in the neighbouring townland of Carrowmore stands another moated site, suggesting this area held strategic importance in medieval times. The castle’s design, making maximum use of the ridge’s natural steep slopes whilst adding substantial earthen defences, represents the typical Norman approach to fortification in Ireland, where speed of construction and effective use of terrain were paramount.