The trapezoidal bawn, enclosing about an acre and a half, still shows substantial sections of its defensive walls, particularly along the eastern side where nearly 20 metres remain standing. The fortification features circular towers at its southeast and northwest corners, both equipped with gun-loops; cross-shaped openings designed for firearms that speak to the violent uncertainties of 17th-century Ireland. The northwest tower survives to two storeys, complete with its original doorways and a corbelled roof, whilst evidence of an external fosse can still be traced along the northern and western sides.

The bawn protects a tower house positioned in its northeast quadrant, forming part of a larger medieval landscape that includes the church and graveyard of Urlingford on the opposite riverbank, connected by an ancient fording point. Settlement earthworks surround both the fortified complex and the ecclesiastical site, suggesting this was once a thriving medieval community long before the modern town developed some 400 metres to the south. The Down Survey of 1655-6 records the castle as belonging to Lord Mountgarrett, an Irish Catholic, marking it as one of many properties that changed hands during the Cromwellian conquest.

Today, the site presents a fascinating mixture of survival and adaptation. Whilst parts of the bawn wall exist only as foundations, and later farm buildings have been constructed against the northern wall, the defensive architecture remains remarkably legible. The southern wall contains three openings that may relate to a later building in the southwest corner, whilst a curious segmental-arched recess in the eastern wall, which doesn’t penetrate the exterior, hints at internal structures now lost. A watermill, possibly replacing an earlier medieval mill, once occupied the northeast corner where the bawn has been most altered, demonstrating how these military structures evolved to serve peaceful purposes in more settled times.