The collapsed stone structure sits atop this medieval earthwork, a reminder of the area’s layered history of fortification and occupation. While time has reduced the building to rubble, its position on the raised mound speaks to its former defensive importance in controlling the surrounding landscape.

The site’s documented history becomes clearer in the early 17th century, when it appears in official records following the Flight of the Earls and subsequent plantation of Ulster. In 1605, Mary, Lady Delvin, the widow of Lord Christopher, and her son Sir Richard Nugent, Baron of Delvin, received a royal grant that included ‘the castle of the Moate, and 5 cartrons there’, which had previously been part of Rossey O’Farrell’s estate. The grant valued this property at 13 shillings and 4 pence Irish, a modest sum that perhaps reflected the castle’s already deteriorating condition.

Today, visitors to this quiet spot can still trace the outline of the motte’s defensive earthworks, whilst the stone remnants on its summit hint at the castle that once stood here. The site represents a common pattern in Irish medieval archaeology, where Norman motte and bailey fortifications were later topped with stone structures, often by Gaelic Irish families like the O’Farrells who dominated this region for centuries before the plantation era transformed landownership across the midlands.