What remains today is largely a grass-covered mound of rubble, roughly triangular in shape and rising to about five metres at its highest point. The site first appeared on the 1842 Ordnance Survey map as a small circular area marked ‘Site of Lissylisheen Castle’, suggesting it was already in ruins by that time. When the antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp visited in 1899, he confirmed its ruinous state, though enough remained for later archaeologists to identify it as a tower house with an accompanying bawn.

The castle’s history reflects the changing fortunes of Gaelic families in sixteenth-century Ireland. In 1574, the O’Loughlin clan held Lissylisheen, but within eleven years the property had passed to the O’Davorens, who appear to have occupied it until the close of the seventeenth century. The tower house itself stood in the southeast corner of the bawn, and whilst it has almost entirely collapsed, sections of intact walling at the northwest corner reveal inner walls that once supported a vault; the western wall extends 3.8 metres whilst the northern wall runs for 5.9 metres.

Today, visitors to this windswept spot will find little more than earthworks and stone fragments, yet the site retains its place in the landscape as a reminder of the fortified homesteads that once dotted the Irish countryside. The ruins form part of the wider archaeological landscape of the Burren region, where centuries of human habitation have left their mark on the distinctive limestone terrain.