The castle’s documented history stretches back to at least 1640, when Anthony O’Dwyer held the property; by the Civil Survey of 1654-6, it was recorded as a manor ‘in repaire and garrisoned’, suggesting it played an active defensive role during those turbulent years.

When antiquarian John O’Donovan visited in 1840, he found a square tower measuring approximately 8.8 by 11.2 metres, still standing 6 metres high with its ground floor vault intact and remnants of a spiral staircase tucked into the southeast corner. A century later, the Irish Tourist Association’s 1943 survey documented a two-storey structure featuring a first-floor vault, evidence of a garderobe, and a substantial rectangular window piercing the south wall. Today, visitors will find only the southeast angle still reaching first-floor height, its roughly coursed limestone walls displaying the characteristic base-batter and carefully alternating quoin stones typical of Irish tower houses.

What remains offers tantalising glimpses of the castle’s original features: traces of internal lime wash on the south wall, a narrow slit-ope that once brought light to the spiral stairs, and the western jambs of a first-floor doorway. The modern farmyard to the west and north may well incorporate fragments of the original bawn wall, whilst the handsome 18th-century farmhouse immediately east likely recycled stone from the castle itself; a common practice that saw many Irish fortifications transformed into the building materials for their Georgian successors.