At Derrydonnell More in County Galway, a ruined outbuilding attached to the complex surrounding Derrydonnell Castle contains exactly that, a generous window opening set into its south-east wall that would have been, by the standards of its neighbours, almost recklessly open. The narrow defensive loops of the adjacent tower-house speak to a very different set of priorities.

The building sits along the line of the north-east wall of the inner bawn, the enclosed courtyard that surrounded the castle. A bawn was a standard feature of Irish tower-house complexes, a walled enclosure designed to protect livestock and provide a first line of defence. This particular structure, roughly twelve metres on its longer axis and eight metres across, is now partially levelled, though its north-east half survives better than the rest. The interior is filled with rubble, and the doorways that once faced each other in the north-west and south-east walls have been robbed out, their stones long since taken for use elsewhere. The researcher Cody, writing in 1989, observed something telling about the building's position: it would have obstructed the covering fire from the north side of the east angle tower, which strongly suggests it was built after the castle itself was already standing. Whoever added it was less concerned with the site's original defensive logic than with whatever purpose this later structure was meant to serve. The wide window reinforces that reading; it belongs to a moment when the threat of attack had receded, or at least when comfort or practicality had begun to outweigh caution.