According to a paper by Lord Walter Fitzgerald published in the Carlow Sentinel in 1904, '…in 1814 the castle suffered to a far greater extent than it did since the year of its erection …'. In that year, a lease was given to a physician, Dr. Philip Parry Middleton. ... With the intention of using the building for a private lunatic asylum, Dr. Middleton adopted what he thought was the speedier process of converting the vaulted interior into additional space by means of blasting powder. The result of his ignorance and folly was the collapse of the eastern half of the castle leaving it in the condition we now see.'