Fennor Castle, or what’s left of it, offers commanding views across the surrounding countryside, a strategic advantage that didn’t go unnoticed by its builders. The Civil Survey of 1654-6 recorded it as ‘a good castle’, with Pierce Butler holding the lands as proprietor in 1640. Today, only fragments of the north and west walls remain, rising about 12 metres into the sky; their thickness of nearly two metres hints at the substantial fortification this once was.

The castle formed part of a larger defensive complex that included a bawn, though neither structure is visible at ground level today. When the Ordnance Survey visited in the 19th century, they found these walls to be all that survived of the original building, describing them as ‘a high but slender fragment’. Just 130 metres to the southwest, a church and graveyard mark the site of the old settlement that grew around the castle, remnants of a community that thrived under the protection of these walls.

Following the castle’s decline, the Turvin family built a house at its foot, attempting to maintain some presence at this historic site. However, even this later dwelling appears to have been abandoned by the early 1700s, leaving Fennor Castle to slowly crumble back into the landscape. Despite its ruined state, the site remains an evocative reminder of the Anglo-Norman and later Butler influence in South Tipperary, its lonely walls standing sentinel over lands that have seen centuries of Irish history unfold.