The plaque is dedicated to one Richard Bourke and carries the name Ellice Hurly alongside it, the relief lettering reading: RICHARD BOURKE ELLICE HURLY MARMORE CURSURGATO. FACIT HOSPESE HOSTIS: HOSPES IN AMPLEXUS SED PROCUI HOSTI. EAT 1643. It is an unusual survival, a piece of personal commemoration embedded in the fabric of a working complex, outlasting the purposes for which that complex was repeatedly remade.

The tower house here was a Burke family castle, and by the time of the Civil Survey of 1654 to 1656, the estate was recorded in some detail. The survey describes the castle and its bawn, meaning the defensive enclosure typically surrounding an Irish tower house, as being in good repair, alongside an orchard, a garden, a water corn mill also in repair, six thatched houses and many cabins. The proprietor at that point was listed as 'Richard Bourke als McWalter of BorresIleigh Esqr. Irish Papist', the designation reflecting the legal and political climate of the Cromwellian settlement, when Catholic landowners faced systematic dispossession. The compound was clearly substantial, more than a bare tower, and the 1643 plaque predates that survey by just over a decade, placed when the family still held the property with some confidence. By the eighteenth century the castle had been converted into a brewery, a transformation that required significant structural alteration and speaks to the building's durability even as its social world changed entirely around it.