According to the 1657 Down Survey map of Rathconrath parish, a tower house once stood here on lands belonging to Thomas Fitzgerald, recorded as an ‘Irish papist’. The map shows the castle as a sturdy tower structure within a triangular field, positioned alongside what would have been a well-travelled medieval route through the countryside.

The castle’s precise location remained something of a mystery until aerial photography revealed telling signs in the landscape. A rectangular earthwork, first documented on a 1776 estate map of Rathconrath, appears to mark the spot where the medieval stone castle once commanded the area. Today, Digital Globe aerial photographs clearly show the cropmark of this same rectangular feature, offering a tantalising glimpse of the castle’s footprint centuries after its stones were likely robbed for other building projects.

The site tells a broader story of medieval Westmeath, where Norman lords and Gaelic families built fortified towers to control territory and protect their holdings. The association with Thomas Fitzgerald places the castle firmly within the complex political landscape of 17th-century Ireland, when Catholic landowners faced increasing pressure under English rule. Though the physical structure has vanished, the field patterns and cropmarks preserve its memory, allowing modern visitors to trace the outline of this lost stronghold in the Irish landscape.