Historical records from the early 20th century paint a picture of a town once bristling with defensive structures; the historian Carrigan noted in 1905 that several castles stood within the town, including one where Mrs Meany’s Grocery and Spirit Establishment operated around 1900, and another directly opposite in James Pollard’s yard, where a cut stone Gothic doorway remained as evidence of its medieval past.

These tower houses, likely positioned at the northwest and southwest angles of the central crossroads where Green Street meets West Street, were substantial structures in their day. The Civil Survey of 1654-6 provides remarkably specific details about one such building: a demolished castle on the west side measuring 45 feet long and 21 feet broad, standing three storeys high with five rooms and a chimney, owned by one Garrald ffittz Garrald and tenanted by George Darker, a Protestant. An evocative drawing from around 1813 captures four tower house tops visible from near St Augustine’s Well, suggesting these fortifications remained prominent features of Callan’s skyline well into the 19th century.

Today, a two-storey hipped-roof building occupies what was likely the site of one of these castles at the southwest angle, its mundane appearance as a shopfront on West and Green Streets belying its possible medieval foundations. Behind its Georgian facade, in the yard to the rear, fragments of the medieval past may still survive; perhaps even the Gothic doorway that Pollard preserved over a century ago. These remnants serve as tangible links to Callan’s fortified past, when tower houses dominated the town centre and provided both residence and defence for the Anglo-Norman families who controlled this strategic Kilkenny market town.