The site consists of a rectangular bawn, a defensive stone wall that once enclosed a tower house positioned in its southwest corner. According to the Civil Survey of 1640, this “Castle & Bawne” belonged to one Phillip Hackett, marking it as an important stronghold during a period of significant upheaval in Irish history. A small stream still flows along the northern and eastern edges of the bawn’s base, just as it would have centuries ago when the fortification was fully operational.

Though the tower house itself has long since collapsed, leaving only a large chunk of masonry lying 6.2 metres outside the south wall where it fell from height, careful examination reveals fascinating structural details. The southwest angle of the bawn shows a double-walled construction, with inner and outer ‘skins’ measuring 1.6 metres high and 0.35 metres thick; this reinforcement supported the weight of the tower house that was built into this corner. Tie-stones and vertical scarring on the inner faces of the south and west walls clearly show where the tower house’s north and east walls joined the bawn, indicating the structure’s internal dimensions of approximately 9 by 6 metres.

Today, visitors can spot several architectural fragments scattered throughout the site, including chamfered stones, what appears to be the sill or lintel from a narrow defensive loop just 14 centimetres wide, and perhaps most impressively, the partially broken transom of a four-light window. These remnants, along with later buildings constructed against the eastern wall of the bawn, offer tangible connections to the site’s layered history. By 1840, when the Ordnance Survey mapped the area, the complex had already earned its current name, The Garrison, though by then it was described simply as “an old bawn within which, near the southwest corner, stood a castle which is now destroyed.”