Originally part of a 2,000-acre grant to Tirlagh Roe O’Boyle in 1611, the estate witnessed the construction of its first substantial dwelling by 1619, when O’Boyle was recorded as living in ‘a good bawn and a house of lime and stone’. This early structure, described in 1622 as a clay and stone building measuring 48 feet long by 25 feet broad, was accompanied by three stone houses and a timber house. However, O’Boyle’s participation in the 1641 rebellion led to the forfeiture of his lands, which eventually passed through several hands before William Wray acquired them in 1700, though his family had already been residing there for some three decades.

The ruins visible today represent a later incarnation of the house, likely built when the Wrays took up residence in the latter half of the 17th century. This substantial three-storey structure with attic, measuring roughly 9.75m by 9.1m internally, was ingeniously designed with two crosswalls that divided each floor into four rooms whilst providing crucial structural support. The ground floor housed the kitchen in the southeast corner, complete with a large fireplace and brick-lined oven, whilst the first floor, accessed via the main entrance at this elevated level, contained what appears to have been the principal living quarters. The southwest room on this floor, fitted with two wall presses and serving as the only passage to the northwest room, was likely the heart of family life. Throughout the house, fireplaces were strategically positioned in room corners or flanking existing flues, with mantels supported by wooden beams, some charred remnants of which still cling to the masonry.

The house sits within a rectangular bawn measuring 34.3m by 29.4m internally, which once boasted four corner towers and probably dates to O’Boyle’s original construction around 1619. Built on sloping ground with a gradual rise from south to north, the site shows evidence of deliberate levelling within the bawn walls, particularly in the southeast. By the 18th century, the house had been abandoned and appeared on Taylor and Skinner’s 1778 map simply as ‘Castle Ruins’. Today, whilst the harled, gabled house survives to its full height (minus the east gable chimney which succumbed to lightning around 1953), it stands as a remarkable example of 17th-century domestic architecture. The survival of features like the segment-headed arched lintel added to a reduced fireplace on the second floor, along with evidence of blocked openings, hints at the evolving needs of its inhabitants. Even the field names surrounding the ruins; ‘the kitchen garden’ and ‘the orchard’; echo the domestic life that once flourished here.