This well-preserved fortification combines a seventeenth-century tower house with an early eighteenth-century extension, creating a fascinating architectural timeline that spans three centuries. The tower house, measuring 10 metres by 12 metres with walls two metres thick, rises three storeys high and retains many of its original defensive features, including a battlemented wall-walk accessed via a doorway in the southeast corner of the second floor.

The castle’s history can be traced back to at least 1654, when the Civil Survey recorded it as the property of Theobald Butler of Killoskehane. At that time, the surveyors noted ‘a castle, a stone house in repayre & ye ruines of a decayed mill a garden and sevall cabbins’, along with a small brook running near the house. The original tower house, built around 1600 according to a datestone on the building, features typical defensive architecture of the period: an external base-batter for structural strength, deep window embrasures that could serve as defensive positions, and a garderobe accessed through a mural passage at first-floor level in the east wall.

The building underwent significant changes in the early 1700s when a six-bay, two-storey house was added to the western end of the tower. Both structures were later remodelled in 1865, as commemorated by the datestone reading ‘Built 1600, rebuilt 1865’. The original entrance to the tower house was located at the northern end of the east wall, leading to dog-legged wooden stairs that provided access to the upper floors. Today, the castle stands as a remarkable example of how Irish fortified houses evolved from purely defensive structures to more comfortable residences whilst retaining their imposing medieval character.