Yet at Beagh, in County Limerick, that is precisely what survives: a substantial chimney of probable 17th-century construction that appears to represent the oldest domestic structure in a long east-west range of buildings set roughly 25 metres south of the medieval tower house known as Beagh Castle. The stack stands alone now, its original walls long gone, but its presence marks a domestic history layered across several centuries and compressed into a single modest farmyard.

The site as a whole is a study in accumulation. Beagh Castle, a tower house of medieval origin, occupies the northern quadrant of what became a 19th-century courtyard. A tower house is a fortified stone residence common across late medieval Ireland, typically several storeys tall with thick defensive walls. Alongside it, an artillery blockhouse was added during the 18th or 19th century, reflecting the estuary's continued strategic importance. The row of cottages along the southern side of the courtyard is itself a product of later alteration: according to research compiled by Caimin O'Brien and drawing on earlier fieldwork by Ní Cheallacháin (2008), the southern courtyard wall appears to have been demolished to make way for the cottages, placing their construction after 1800. At the western end of the row, a 19th-century outhouse still shows traces of the destroyed courtyard wall it replaced. It is the chimney stack immediately to its east, however, that carries the longest memory on the site, suggesting a dwelling here from the 17th century onwards. The dormer cottages stretching further east along the row are thought to date from the 19th century and may once have housed coastguard personnel; Beagh Castle itself served as a coastguard station during that period.

Beagh sits a short distance west of Beagh Quay, directly atop the low cliff line that forms part of the Shannon's southern shore in County Limerick. The site is not a managed visitor attraction, and the layering of structures, medieval tower, blockhouse, possible 17th-century chimney, and 19th-century cottages, requires some patience to read. The chimney stack is the detail most easily overlooked, standing as it does among later buildings, but it repays attention as the probable oldest domestic remnant in the complex. The estuary setting means the light and weather off the Shannon shift considerably with the season, and the cliff edge is close.