Today, visitors won’t find any visible surface traces of the structure; the site has been reclaimed by the landscape, leaving only historical records to tell its story. Archaeological surveys suggest this was likely a Synan castle, a type of fortified structure common in medieval Cork.

The castle’s most famous connection is to Edmund Spenser, the English poet best known for “The Faerie Queene”, who was granted the property in the late 16th century as part of the Munster Plantation. Spenser, who served as an administrator for the English crown in Ireland, didn’t hold onto Richardstown Castle for long; he subsequently passed ownership to a member of the Roche family, one of Cork’s prominent Norman-Irish dynasties. This transfer reflects the complex web of land ownership and political alliances that characterised Elizabethan Ireland, where English colonists often relied on established local families to maintain control.

The castle met its dramatic end not through siege or rebellion, but through an act of nature. According to local historian Jones, writing in 1902, the structure was “knocked down by lightning in 1865”, bringing centuries of history to an abrupt close. While nothing remains above ground today, the site continues to be of archaeological interest, documented in the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork as a reminder of the area’s layered past, from medieval fortification to Tudor plantation to Victorian-era ruin.