The fortification encloses a level rectangular area measuring 47 metres north to south and 33 metres east to west, with walls an impressive 1.3 metres thick. At the northeast corner, you can still see the base of an oval bastion that once served as a defensive tower, complete with two garderobe chutes built into opposite walls where the bastion meets the main fortification. The northern chute features an arched opening that would have emptied into what was once a surrounding moat.

The defensive moat, 6.5 metres wide and originally encircling the entire structure, now only survives along the northwest side as a broad, flat-bottomed depression about 75 centimetres deep. Whilst the bastions at the other three corners have been lost to time, there’s an unusual square projection at the southern end of the eastern wall; likely the foundation remains of a square tower. The design bears striking similarities to the Powder Mills in Ballincollig, County Cork, where the bawn wall towers served as living quarters rather than purely defensive structures.

Archaeological evidence suggests this was probably a plantation castle from the late 16th or early 17th century, built during the period of English and Scottish settlement in Ireland. The raised interior shows faint traces of rectangular structures that once stood against the inside of the bawn walls, hinting at the domestic buildings that would have housed the castle’s inhabitants. These plantation castles represent a fascinating period in Irish history when new landowners constructed fortified homes that combined residential comfort with defensive necessity, adapting traditional Irish tower house designs to meet their own architectural preferences.