This tower house, measuring approximately 10 metres square with walls over 2 metres thick, was already in ruins by the mid-17th century. The Civil Survey of 1654-6 recorded it rather bluntly as ‘the stumpe of an old castle and the ruines of an old Mill all wast’, when it belonged to Thomas Butler of Kilconell, described as an ‘Irish Papist’. Despite its early deterioration, the structure has endured, albeit heavily modified during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The castle’s defensive features reveal its original purpose as a fortified residence. The main entrance on the south wall, with its two-centred doorway and punch-dressed jambs, leads into a lobby protected by an overhead murder hole; a small guardroom sits to one side, complete with a musket loop covering the approach. The tower’s three storeys were once connected by mural stairs accessed from the lobby, and wooden floors rested on stone corbels that still jut from the walls. Original windows have largely been blocked up and replaced with Victorian brick windows and circular openings, though traces of the earlier single-light windows remain, including one with an elegant ogee-headed arch. Angle loops at the corners and specialised musket loop embrasures with curved sides, designed to give defenders better firing angles, speak to an era when such towers needed to be both home and fortress.

Today, visitors can still make out the gothic crenellations along the wall-walk and the ghost impression of the original gabled roofline above the second floor. A garderobe chute outlet at the base of the north wall serves as a reminder of the practical considerations of medieval living, whilst the faint outline of an attached house on the east face hints at later attempts to expand the living quarters. The OS Letters from the 1930s mention outbuildings that once stood about 50 yards to the southeast, though these have long since vanished. Built from roughly coursed limestone rubble with carefully dressed corner stones, Liskeveen Castle remains an evocative ruin, its weathered walls holding stories of the Butler family and the turbulent history of medieval Tipperary.