That, in a way, is precisely the point. A small rectangular structure, roughly ten metres east to west and five metres north to south, appeared on the 1842 Ordnance Survey six-inch map with the unassuming label "Turret". By 1905, it had vanished from the cartographic record entirely, and today there is no visible surface trace of it whatsoever. What makes the site linger in the mind is not its absence but the argument about what it once was.

The building was demolished in 1860, and local tradition held that it had been a belfry associated with a castle of the Roches, a prominent Anglo-Norman family with a significant presence across County Cork in the medieval period. A researcher named Jones, writing in Grove White's survey between 1905 and 1925, was sceptical. Having gathered descriptions from people who had seen it or knew it before its demolition, Jones concluded that it was more likely a columbarium, the formal term for a dovecote, a structure built to house large numbers of pigeons. Columbaria were common features of medieval and early modern estates across Ireland and Britain, typically square or rectangular towers with rows of nesting boxes lining the interior walls. They provided a reliable source of fresh meat and eggs, particularly through winter, and their presence often signals a manorial settlement nearby. Jones's inference rests on the building's form as described to him rather than on any surviving fabric, which makes it a piece of architectural detective work rather than confirmed fact. Adding further texture to the site, Jones noted that ploughing in adjacent fields had turned up the foundations of a castle or church, as well as what he described as a furnace for burning the dead, with remains of fires, suggesting a much denser and longer-lived pattern of occupation in this quiet stretch of pasture than the bare grass now gives any reason to suspect.