This site appears on the Down Survey maps of 1655-6, marked as a tower house within the Liberties of the City of Kilkenny, where it stood in the old townland of Capaghmore. The maps reveal that in 1640, the castle belonged to Henry Archer, recorded as an Irish Papist in the accompanying terrier documents; a designation that would prove fateful when his lands were forfeited during the Cromwellian confiscations of 1653.

Historical records describe Cappagh, also known as Cappaghmore or Cappanagearagh, as an ancient manor that encompassed the neighbouring lands of Newtown and Fowlingrath, now called Holdensrath. The castle’s importance in the local landscape is evident from its consistent appearance on maps spanning centuries, though administrative changes have shuffled its location between townlands; originally recorded in Cappagh on the first Ordnance Survey maps of 1839-40, boundary revisions meant that by 1945-6, the site officially lay within Lacken townland.

Today, visitors to the site will find a raised, grass-covered rectangular area measuring roughly 24 metres northwest to southeast and 22 metres northeast to southwest, marking where the castle once stood within its protective bawn. While the structure itself has vanished, fragments of limestone rubble and mortar have been gathered and moved to the eastern corner of what was once a moated defensive site. These modest remains offer a tangible connection to a time when tower houses dotted the Irish countryside, serving as both homes and fortifications for families like the Archers, whose Catholic faith ultimately cost them their ancestral lands.