The outer shell, with its romanticised pointed windows and decorative stonework, was applied in the early 1800s, yet the structure beneath it belongs to an entirely earlier world, one of Anglo-Norman landholding and fortified strongholds.

The building is associated with the Luttrell family, an Anglo-Norman dynasty whose name survives in the wider townland and in the resort that now occupies the estate. The rectangular structure, roughly 19 metres long and 10 metres wide, rises two storeys over a basement. Its eastern wall, nearly 1.6 metres thick, retains a batter, meaning it splays outward at the base in the manner typical of defensive construction, and is flanked by rounded turrets at each external angle. These are not Gothic Revival ornaments; they are remnants of the earlier fortifications that the mansion absorbed rather than replaced, particularly at the north-eastern end where the older fabric is most visible. In 1800 the Luttrell family sold the property to Luke White, who renamed it Woodlands and commissioned the Gothic encasing that gives the building its current appearance. The effect is a common enough 19th century ambition, dressing a working castle in the aesthetic language of Romantic medievalism, but here the original defensive architecture was substantial enough to survive beneath the remodelling rather than be swept away by it.

The house is now situated within the grounds of Luttrellstown Golf Resort, which means public access to the structure itself is limited to guests and members. The building is most legible from the east, where the battered wall and turrets give a clearer sense of its pre-Georgian origins. Visitors with an interest in the archaeology should look closely at the north-eastern section, where the transition between the absorbed fortifications and the later Gothic work is most apparent.