The site’s history stretches back to the 12th century when Roger le Bottiler, whose name likely gave rise to Battlestown through the evolution of Bottilerstown, witnessed a grant in 1195. By 1390, the area had established connections with the powerful Dunbrody Abbey, with John Battaile serving as one of the abbey’s retainers. The land changed hands amongst influential families over the centuries; in 1522, Alexander Devereux, the abbot of Dunbrody, granted 120 acres at Battlestown to his relative Stephen Devereux, who retained the property until Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries, after which it passed to Osborne Itchingham in 1545.

The castle itself emerges more clearly in historical records during the turbulent 1640s. In 1642, Royalist forces besieged at nearby Duncannon burned the castle, marking a violent chapter in its story. The Civil Survey of 1654;5 records that John Etchingham owned 240 acres at Battalestowne along with its castle in 1640, suggesting the structure survived the burning or was rebuilt. By 1684, Robert Leigh noted it as merely “an old tower,” indicating its decline had already begun.

Today, visitors to the site on its gentle east;facing slope will find no standing stones or walls to mark where the castle once stood. The 1839 Ordnance Survey map shows it as a faint rectangular outline, measuring roughly 20 metres northeast to southwest and 15 metres northwest to southeast, but even these traces have vanished from the modern landscape. The community that once lived in and around the castle likely worshipped at Templeboy church, which stands about 700 metres to the west, a more enduring monument to medieval life in this corner of Wexford.