But what survives at Graystown in County Tipperary is the ghostly outline of a small medieval complex that once included a tower, at least two bawn enclosures, a long rectangular house, and several ancillary buildings, all now reduced to grass-covered wall-footings sitting quietly in open farmland.

The site sits two fields north of Graystown Castle, on a slight rise of rock outcrop that would have given whoever lived here clear sightlines in every direction. A bawn, to use the term as it was understood in late medieval and early modern Ireland, was a walled or embanked enclosure attached to a tower or house, used to protect livestock and provide a defensible yard. Here, the arrangement is more elaborate than a simple tower-and-bawn pairing. A rectangular tower stands to the northwest, accompanied by its own bawn, while a separate long rectangular house to the northeast has its own enclosure, with two further buildings constructed against the inner face of that bawn wall. One of these smaller structures appears to have been built directly onto the northwest wall of the house, suggesting it may have been an extension or later addition rather than a freestanding outbuilding; its earthen bank measures roughly 2.7 metres at the base and just over a metre at the top, with a modest internal height of around 0.2 metres. To the south, a field away, lies a deserted medieval settlement, which places this cluster of buildings within a broader landscape of abandonment, a community that was once coherent and active and is now entirely silent above ground.