Once positioned strategically on high ground near the south bank of the Castletown River, this motte and bailey castle featured a distinctive crescent-shaped bailey to the south, marked by defensive scarping. A fosse, or defensive ditch, separated the bailey from the motte proper, with an additional bank reinforcing the northwestern side of the fortification.

Historical documentation provides tantalising glimpses of what once stood here. Thomas Wright’s 1758 illustration depicts the site with its high bailey and steep-sided motte still intact, whilst a 1906 photograph by Tempest, taken from nearly the same vantage point, captured the earthwork before its destruction. The 1939 Ordnance Survey map still showed the castle’s footprint clearly, recording these medieval defensive features for posterity.

The site yielded one intriguing archaeological detail before its demise. In 1911, when workers cut away a small portion of the motte on the river side, they uncovered large stones that appeared to form part of the original motte foundations. These structural elements hint at the substantial engineering that went into creating these Norman strongholds, built to project power and control over the surrounding Irish landscape. Today, visitors to the area will find little physical evidence of this once-imposing fortification; its story preserved mainly through historical records and the archaeological surveys conducted in the 1980s and 1990s.