This late 16th-century Fitzgerald stronghold, built around 1580, represents a classic example of an Irish tower house from the Elizabethan period. The rectangular fortified residence originally rose four storeys high with an attic level, measuring approximately 15.5 metres east to west and 11.5 metres north to south. Though time has taken its toll, with significant collapses occurring in the 1870s and 1890s, the remaining structure still reveals fascinating architectural details of its defensive design.

The castle’s construction shows typical features of its era: roughly coursed limestone rubble walls with dressed quoin stones, defensive bartizans at the northeast and southwest corners complete with gun loops, and a prominent central chimney stack in the eastern gable. Each floor level had its own fireplace, with the massive chimney crowned by four diagonal flues with cut stone cornicing. The interior featured wooden floors supported by joists resting on corbelled wall plates, whilst evidence suggests the ground floor was divided into two rooms by a cross wall. Particularly intriguing is the stone-built wall oven in the northeast corner, heated from the central fireplace, and a mural staircase in the east gable that once led to a now-destroyed machicolation; a defensive feature that allowed defenders to drop objects on attackers below.

The castle’s violent history adds a dark chapter to its story. During the Elizabethan period, Gerald Oge Fitzgerald and his wife, daughter of John Bowen of Ballyadams Castle, were murdered here when the fortress was attacked and burned. Their son, known as ‘Yellow Gerald Fitzgerald’, survived only because he was visiting his grandfather’s castle at Ballyadams when the assault occurred. Austin Cooper’s 1781 drawing shows the castle still relatively intact with both east and west gables supporting their distinctive chimney stacks, but by 1903 much of the structure had collapsed into its current ruined state. Originally, the tower house stood at the centre of a large square bawn, though only the wall footings remain visible today, approximately 19 metres to the north and 18 metres to the south of the main structure.