What visitors see today is actually a complex architectural puzzle: a late sixteenth or early seventeenth century tower house that has been absorbed into an eighteenth century mansion, then rebuilt again in the nineteenth century. The original tower house, with its substantial walls measuring over a metre thick, forms the heart of the structure, its internal dimensions stretching nearly 11 metres northeast to southwest and almost 14 metres northwest to southeast.

The castle’s turbulent past is etched into historical records from the Civil Survey of 1654-6, which noted it as being ‘partly repaired at the Common Wealthes charge’ following the upheavals of the Cromwellian period. The property had multiple proprietors at that time, including Daniel Kennedy of Ballintotta, Dermot Kennedy of Shanballyard, and Richard Butler of Kilcash; all listed as ‘Irish Papists’ in the survey’s typically blunt terminology. The original fortress, known as Clohonan or Cloghanane Castle, was granted to John Otway in 1665, who promptly renamed it after himself, though traces of its earlier identity persist in local memory and place names.

Architectural details reveal the building’s defensive origins and domestic evolution. The northeast doorway, with its chamfered edge typical of the period, now leads to stairs descending into the basement of the Georgian addition. Original flat-headed windows flanked by gun loops pierce the thick walls, whilst one blocked window in the northeast wall, with its distinctive wooden lintel beneath voussoirs of slender slabs, now faces into an interior room of the later house. Small domestic touches remain too: a wall cupboard tucked into the northwest corner, and traces of wooden shutters with iron hinges that once secured the windows against both weather and unwanted visitors.