The structure sits on level pasture land and may have formed part of a larger defensive complex that once protected this area of County Kildare.

The gatehouse consists of a substantial rubble-built arch, measuring 4.55 metres wide and 3.5 metres high, which springs from a solid rectangular column on its western side and connects to a compact three-storied tower on the east. This tower, which features a pronounced base batter reaching 2.85 metres in height, projects northward from the archway’s face and measures 3.9 metres north to south and 2.6 metres in width. Entry to the tower is gained through a narrow, square-headed doorway positioned at the southern end of its western wall, just inside the arch itself. Once inside, visitors would have found a small passageway leading to an embrasure with a defensive loop facing east, whilst a spiral staircase, lit by a double-splayed loop, winds anticlockwise to the first floor where a doorway once provided access to a wall-walk above the archway.

Archaeological evidence suggests this was part of a larger fortified enclosure, with remnants of a bawn wall extending approximately 6.1 metres south from the tower’s southwest corner; this defensive wall, which stands 2.9 metres high and measures 0.8 metres thick, still contains a defensive loop. The tower also features practical medieval elements including a garderobe opening on the eastern wall and a mysterious sub-floor passage beneath the embrasure’s flagstone flooring. Now partially blocked and covered in ivy, the gatehouse has been designated a National Monument under preservation order 3/2000, recognising its importance as a surviving example of late medieval defensive architecture in Ireland.