It is a belvedere, the kind of ornamental structure that Georgian and later estate owners built not for defence or storage but purely for looking out from, or simply for being looked at. The tower at Carrignamuck sits to the south of the main house, half-absorbed by woodland, which is more or less exactly where a designed landscape feature of this type was meant to go.

The tower is described as being of roughly the same date as the house itself, placing it in the post-1700 period when the fashion for landscaped demesnes was at its height among the Irish landed classes. Country houses of that era frequently came with orchestrated grounds that might include follies, eye-catchers, walled gardens, and belvederes, each element positioned to create a pleasing prospect from the house or to reward a walk through the estate. A square tower tucked into a wood to the south would have served both purposes, drawing the eye from the house and offering an elevated viewpoint for anyone who climbed it. That it was built to match the house in period, if not necessarily in scale, suggests it was conceived as part of a coherent design rather than added as an afterthought.