This tower house type castle first appears on historical records in the Down Survey map of Killare parish, where it’s marked as ‘Dooneild’. The survey’s terrier provides fascinating context, noting that castles stood on several lands in the area including “Clare, Dooneild, Rathskeagh, Killinbrack, Bishopsland Ballikenny”, painting a picture of a landscape once dotted with defensive structures. The map shows the castle standing on lands that belonged to Richard Dalton in 1640, providing a tangible connection to the families who once called this place home.

By the time the Ordnance Survey mapped the area in 1837, the structure was already marked as ‘Duneel Castle’ and shown as a rectangular building, suggesting it had retained its basic form despite the passage of nearly two centuries. Today, what remains are fragments of walls, some incorporated into field boundaries; a practical recycling of stone that’s common across the Irish countryside. The most substantial surviving portion stands at the southwest corner, where roughly two metres of wall still reaches skyward, though its outer face has fallen away to reveal the rubble core within.

The exposed interior offers intriguing architectural clues; the inner face of this wall inclines gently inward, which archaeologists suggest might indicate where a barrel vault once sprang from the walls. Along the nearby laneway lies a large piece of cut stone that appears to be part of a doorway, now displaced from its original position. While no other dressed stonework or earthworks are visible in the immediate vicinity, these scattered remains are enough to confirm this was likely a tower house; one of hundreds built across Ireland between the 15th and 17th centuries by landowners seeking both comfort and security in uncertain times.