The tower stands at what was once the southwest corner of Bective Abbey’s cloister, a Cistercian monastery known as the Abbey of the Beatitudes. When Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries reached Ireland in 1537, the abbey was suppressed and its lands passed into secular hands, first leased to Thomas Agard, a vice treasurer of the Mint, before being purchased from the Crown by Andrew Wyse in 1552.

The tower house itself represents a remarkable example of post-dissolution architecture, built directly atop the abbey’s 15th-century vaulted chambers. Measuring approximately 11 metres east to west and 10 metres north to south, the structure rises through three upper floors above its medieval foundation. Each level featured large rectangular windows on the south and west walls, whilst fireplaces were positioned in the north and east walls, suggesting the building served as a comfortable residence rather than a purely defensive structure. Access was provided via a first-floor entrance through a lintelled doorway in a projecting tower at the southeast corner, with a spiral staircase in the southwest tower connecting all floors.

Today, this intriguing hybrid of monastic and secular architecture stands as National Monument No. 187 under state guardianship, roughly 150 metres northwest of the River Boyne’s current course. The tower house serves as a tangible reminder of how Ireland’s religious houses were transformed during the Tudor period, their sacred stones repurposed to create the fortified homes of a new landowning class.