Historical records place the family here as early as 1543, with their fortunes and misfortunes carefully documented through the turbulent years of 17th-century Ireland. By 1641, Jasper Prendergast held considerable wealth; he owned 120 acres and the castle at Great Gortins, plus an additional 480 acres scattered across Kilmannan parish in the townlands of Kilmannan, Coolsallagh, Woodstown and Little Gortins.

The family’s prosperity came to an abrupt end during the Cromwellian conquest. In 1653, John Prendergast of Gortins, along with 24 dependents, found himself on the list for deportation to Connacht; part of Cromwell’s systematic displacement of Catholic landowners from their estates. This forced migration marked the end of the Prendergasts’ long association with Gortins, leaving their castle to slowly deteriorate over the centuries that followed.

Today, only fragments of the structure survive. A single wall section measuring 4.2 metres long, 2.2 metres high and 1.25 metres thick offers few clues about the original building, though it may have formed part of a tower house, the fortified residence typical of Irish gentry during the medieval period. Dressed granite stones from what was once a pointed doorway lie scattered about the site, silent witnesses to the castle’s former architectural dignity. These remnants, documented in the Archaeological Inventory of County Wexford, provide a tangible connection to the Prendergasts and their lost world of landed power in pre-Cromwellian Ireland.