It is a modest remnant, but the story folded inside it involves a father and son on opposite sides of a war, a deliberate burning, and the particular ironies that the Plantation of Ireland produced in families caught between loyalty and rebellion.

The castle was built by Sir Laurence Esmonde, a member of the Old English Esmonde family of Johnstown Castle, who distinguished himself from his relations by remaining a loyal Protestant. That distinction proved lucrative. In 1611 he was appointed one of two Commissioners for the Plantation of Wexford, and in 1613 he sat as an MP for the county. His reward was a grant of around 5,500 acres centred on a place called Lemmeneagh, which became known as Limbrick or Limerick. He was obliged as part of the grant to build a castle, and by 1621 he had done so. A survey from that year describes a substantial complex: two houses set back-to-back, each two-and-a-half storeys, each facing its own bawn, which is to say an enclosed courtyard, with flanking towers at the corners and a gatehouse giving access to the smaller of the two courts. The manor held the right to hold courts, weekly markets, and an annual fair, and a settlement grew up along the road running east towards the local church. Sir Laurence was also Commander of Duncannon Fort from around 1603 until his death in 1645, a post that kept him frequently away from his Wexford estate.

When the 1641 Rebellion broke out, Sir Laurence was able to muster 140 men for the castle's defence, most of them tenants seeking safety within its walls. The uncomfortable detail is that his own son, Sir Thomas Esmonde, was among the rebels. Sir Thomas took control of the castle in 1641 and held it for eight years, until the approach of Cromwell's forces in 1649 prompted him to burn it rather than surrender it. By the time the Civil Survey was conducted in 1654, the castle was recorded as ruined. What remains today is the southern flanking tower of the bawn, its circular ground-floor chamber still containing two gun loops, its first floor retaining two windows in what was once a rectangular room. The eastern side of the tower has gone entirely, and the wooden floor that once divided the two levels is long since lost.