According to both the 1897 and 1920 Ordnance Survey maps, a castle once stood within a rath (an ancient Irish ringfort) in the townland of Roughan, marked by a cross symbol denoting ‘site of’. Historical records support this claim; a 1574 document confirms that a castle existed here under the ownership of the O’Loughlin family. Local tradition has long maintained that the circular earthwork was indeed home to the Castle of Roughan, and antiquarian Thomas Westropp, writing in 1915, found himself inclined to accept these accounts, noting that there seemed to have been a castle somewhere in the townland.

Yet the physical evidence for this castle remains frustratingly elusive. Despite the historical documentation and local memory, no visible traces of masonry or foundations can be found within the rath itself, whose interior remains largely undisturbed. The mystery deepens, however, when examining the abandoned farmhouse immediately east of the ringfort, which dates to the 18th or 19th century. This building incorporates numerous cut and dressed limestone blocks that seem out of place in a simple farmhouse.

Most intriguingly, the farmhouse features architectural elements that appear distinctly medieval in character. A blocked doorway displays a sophisticated limestone lintel, measuring just over a metre wide, finished as a flat elliptical arch with carefully chamfered edges. At the base of this same doorway lies what appears to be the sillstone from a single-light chamfered window, measuring nearly half a metre across. These architectural fragments, with their late-medieval styling, may well be the only surviving remnants of the lost Roughan Castle, salvaged and incorporated into the later farmhouse when the original structure was demolished. The practice of reusing dressed stone from ruined castles was common in Ireland, turning these fragments into tantalising clues about the vanished fortress that once stood guard over this Clare landscape.