Built around the mid-15th century, the structure measures 14 metres north to south and 9.3 metres east to west, constructed from roughly coursed limestone rubble. Local tradition has long associated the building with the Knights Templar, though this appears to be a case of historical confusion; the three crusading orders present in medieval Ireland, the Templars, Hospitallers, and the Hospital of St John the Baptist, have become muddled in popular memory. The most likely connection is to the Hospital of St John the Baptist in Dublin, who owned Fethard’s parish church and held its rectory until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1540.

The tower house’s original design featured a pointed vaulted ground floor chamber with a loft space tucked beneath the vault, whilst the first floor housed a formal hall accessed by an external stone stairway along the western wall. One particularly intriguing feature is a round-headed laver set within a recessed niche on the first floor; this wash basin is highly unusual in Irish secular buildings and strongly suggests the building’s ecclesiastical connections. The structure also earned the name ‘Court Castle’, possibly because Thomas Everard, the last prior of the Hospital of St John the Baptist who returned to Fethard as vicar after the Dissolution, held his twice-yearly Courts Leet for petty offences here. By 1607, the building was definitely Everard property.

Multiple phases of modification have left their mark on the structure. In the late 16th or early 17th century, significant alterations included adding another floor within the original hall space, inserting multiple three-light windows, and adding a polished limestone fireplace with a distinctive pseudo-four-centred arch in the eastern wall. The building’s defensive features include a murder hole in the entrance turret and cross-loops for defence, whilst practical amenities included wall cupboards, a garderobe chamber, and access to a wall-walk via a spiral stair. The parapets retain fascinating architectural details, including mural chambers carried on arcades; the southern arcade features three depressed voussoir arches on tapering corbels, whilst the northern arcade originally had three round-headed limestone arches, though these were partially broken out during later modifications. An 18th or 19th century cross-wall created a through passage at the northern end, demonstrating how the building continued to evolve long after its medieval origins.