When surveyed in 1943, investigators found no trace of the structure that once commanded this townland, though just over a century earlier, fragments of walls still stood about six feet high. The 1840 survey painted a melancholy picture of decay, describing ruins measuring approximately seventeen by eight and a half metres, with the castle having fallen into near complete collapse.

The site’s documentary history stretches back to the early fifteenth century, when it was known variously as Ballyanhiny or Fanningstown in Fedamore parish. Records from 1583 refer to it as “ffanyngstown or Ballynanyng Castle”, and by 1592, the property had been granted to Mainwaring, who subsequently passed it to the Earl of Thomond in 1618. The Civil Survey of 1654-56 provides a particularly evocative snapshot of the castle’s decline, noting that Barnaby, Earl of Thomond owned the lands where “an oulde Ruinous Castle & six Cabbins” stood amongst his holdings.

By 1657, the castle was already described as ruinous, suggesting its deterioration had begun well before the Cromwellian period. This gradual erasure from the physical landscape mirrors countless other Irish tower houses and castles that once dotted the countryside; structures that served as both defensive fortifications and symbols of authority, now surviving only in the careful notations of antiquarians and surveyors who documented their slow dissolution into history.