The ruined castle before you was first built by the Norman followers of Theobald Butler as a 2 storey hall-keep in the 13th/14th c. One Thomas de Cantwell paid tax for the land of the manor of Dromineer in 1299. In the late 14th c. the land passed back to the native Ormond O'Kennedy sept, who were no doubt responsible for remodelling it into a 4 storey tower house in the 15th/16th c. After the Butler Earls of Ormond recovered the manor, the Cantwells returned as tenants in 1582, and still held it in 1640. The castle sustained its first and only recorded seige during the Cromwellian Wars, when Ireton's forces took and garrisoned it in 1650. The lands were returned to the Earl of Ormond at the restoration as absentee landlord, and passed down in that family until sold in the late 19th c. The castle appears to have fallen into disuse in the late 17th c.

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