Today, nothing remains visible in the pasture where this mysterious structure once stood, though its presence lingers on historic maps. The Ordnance Survey’s 1837 six-inch map marks it as a small rectangular building, measuring roughly 10 metres north to south and 5 metres east to west, labelled in Gothic script as ‘Tonvee Castle’. By 1925, the same survey had relegated it to merely ‘the site of a castle’, acknowledging its disappearance.

The castle’s history remains frustratingly elusive. It doesn’t appear on Strafford’s map from around 1636, and no other historical sources mention it, leaving its origins and purpose shrouded in mystery. When Ordnance Survey officials visited around 1910, they found only heaps of stones; evidence of a structure that had already succumbed to time and neglect. The site itself sits on low-lying, level ground with a small stream running northwest to southeast about 10 metres to the southwest, typical of the practical locations chosen for minor fortifications in medieval Ireland.

What makes Tonvee Castle particularly intriguing is its complete absence from historical records. Unlike many Irish castles that feature in annals, land grants, or family histories, this structure left no paper trail whatsoever. Whether it was a tower house, a fortified residence, or perhaps something misidentified as a castle by early surveyors, we may never know. Today, anyone walking through the pasture at Tonvey would have no idea they were crossing the site of this enigmatic building, its stones long since scattered or buried, leaving only cartographic ghosts to hint at what once stood here.