The ruin at Cooleen in County Limerick tells a different story. Known today as Temple Colman, it measures a substantial 22.35 metres by 6.8 metres internally, dimensions that suggest a building of some consequence despite the almost total absence of surviving architectural detail. What the walls that do remain show is largely featureless stonework; no carved ornament, no legible window mouldings, the south wall reduced to a thickness of less than a metre.

The place carries a long and tangled documentary history. Its medieval name ran through several spellings, Ballysiward, Culballysiward, Ballysyward, all variants rooted in a personal name that shifted with each generation of scribes. As early as 1210, Hamo de Valoignes, Lord of Iniskefty, granted lands here to the archbishopric of Dublin, and in 1250 both Bruree and Ballysyward churches were formally granted to the deanery. By 1284, Alexander son of Godfred of Anud was conveying Culbalysiward to John de Sandford, Archbishop of Dublin. The church then passed through the hands of the Dondon family, with records noting in 1289 that it had been taken unjustly from one John Dondon, and in 1318 that John, son of Peter Daundon, broke into and robbed the building outright. The Dondons were still recorded as holding Balleheward in 1586. The historian T. J. Westropp, writing in 1904 to 1905, noted that Lewis had described it as a templary built in 1287, while the scholar O'Donovan had applied a different Irish place-name to the site, which Westropp considered mistaken.

The ruins lie in the Cooleen area of County Limerick, in the old Bruree parish. When Westropp visited around 1901, he found that the east gable and one wall had fallen since the 1840 survey, leaving even less than the Ordnance Survey letters had described. The south wall, which retained a defaced window as late as 1840, is the most substantial surviving element. There are no features to hunt for in the conventional sense; what makes the site worth seeking out is precisely the accumulation of recorded incident around something so physically reduced, the gap between the documentary weight of seven centuries and the thin remaining walls on the ground.