The only problem is that he had one wife, and she outlived him.

The tower at Dunisky was almost certainly put up around 1840 by Charles Beamish, who lived at nearby Delacour Villa and died in 1867. Beamish was recorded by his own family as a noted eccentric, which may explain a good deal. The structure is compact but carefully detailed: roughly 3.75 metres square internally, with a clasped buttress at each corner, a ground-floor entrance in the west wall, and upper floors each fitted with a central window in every wall and a small corner fireplace. That last detail is curious. A mausoleum has no need of fireplaces; a folly, built for the pleasure of occupying an elevated room with a view, certainly does. The roof survives, flat slabs laid on a metal framework, which is unusual for a building of this age and apparent purpose. Inside, the earthen floor shows no trace of burials, and there are no memorial tablets or inscriptions. The internal floors and stairs are gone entirely, leaving the upper rooms inaccessible. The 1842 Ordnance Survey six-inch map labels it a mausoleum, which is presumably what Beamish told people, or what people assumed, and the legend of the three wives followed naturally enough. Samuel Lewis, writing his topographical dictionary in 1837, makes no mention of it, suggesting the tower had not yet been built when he gathered his information, and placing its construction in the narrow window between those two dates.

The site occupies the remains of the earlier parish church of Dunisky, a layering of religious, funerary, and purely whimsical use that is unusual even by the standards of Irish estate landscapes. Follies, as a building type, were ornamental structures built largely for visual effect or personal amusement, often given a theatrical form borrowed from castles, ruins, or towers, and Beamish's effort fits the type well. What distinguishes it is the fireplace detail, the graveyard setting, and the stubborn afterlife of the three-wives legend, which outlasted any architectural evidence that might have supported it.