First mentioned in an 1840 survey, the castle was said to have belonged initially to Brian O’Cuanach before passing into the hands of the Earl of Thomond. Though marked on the 1840 Ordnance Survey map, the structure itself had already disappeared by the time cartographers arrived, leaving behind only local memory and scattered documentary references, including a mention in a Trinity College manuscript detailing the O’Brien family pedigree.

The site’s history proves frustratingly elusive for historians attempting to piece together its past. Thomas Johnson Westropp, writing in the early 1900s, noted a reference to ‘Tohtcloggin’ dating back to 1302, though by 1655 William Petty’s survey showed only ‘Cloggin’ with no castle marked. Westropp speculated it might have been connected to the adjoining townland of Ballyvalode, though he admitted the identification remained uncertain. Today, visitors to the gently sloping pasture field will find no visible remains of the castle; only a shallow hollow measuring roughly 10 by 12 metres, with natural rock outcropping through the grass, suggests the area was once quarried, perhaps for building materials.

What makes this absence particularly intriguing is the castle’s proximity to other medieval structures that have survived in some form. Just 150 metres to the east stand the remains of Castlecluggin Church and its associated graveyard, tangible links to the medieval community that once inhabited this corner of Limerick. These surviving ecclesiastical ruins serve as a reminder that the castle, now completely erased from the landscape, once formed part of a larger medieval settlement complex where secular and religious power intersected in the persons of the O’Cuanachs and later the powerful Earls of Thomond.