Known locally as an Chaisleáin Chria, meaning ‘castle of clay’, this once-standing tower house has left behind a curious legacy documented through centuries of land transfers and surveys. The site, marked on the 1840 Ordnance Survey map, sits adjacent to what are now sports fields, though the original ‘Castle Field’ designation persists in local memory.

The castle’s documented history stretches back to at least 1581, when one Gerald fitzEdmund held what was then called Glanehaggylshoen Castle. By 1608, it had passed to Edmund MacGibbon, known as the White Knight, whose death that year marked another change in ownership. The structure appears to have already fallen into disrepair by the mid-17th century; the 1654-56 Civil Survey described it rather dismissively as ‘a smale stump of a Castle out of Reparation’. Nicholas Haly of Tooreen, recorded as an Irish papist, owned the lands at this time, though he would sell the property to J. and W. Reeves in 1655, with the sale confirmed to J. Reeves in 1667.

While no physical remains are visible today, the castle’s form has been preserved through historical cartography. Both the 17th century Down Survey barony map of Coshlea and the 1654-56 parish map of Ballylanders depict what appears to have been a tower house, a common defensive structure in medieval Ireland. A circular quarry shown on later maps near the site may have resulted from stone robbing, a common fate for abandoned castles whose dressed stones proved too valuable to leave unused in new construction projects.