Fort Falkland was built around 1624 and was named after Henry Cary, Lord Falkland who had come to Ireland as Lord Deputy in 1622. The bastion design was atypical of a seventeenth century fort and this has caused researchers to suggest that Fort Falkland was an extension and upgrade of a previously existing medieval structure which was possible Anglo-Norman in origin. The Fort disappeared at some time during the seventeenth and a military barracks was constructed in its place in 1800. Remains of the structure includes a barrel-vaulted powder magazine built around 1806, with a gun platform above. These walls are thought to be the perimeter walls of Fort Falkland dating from the 1600s. According to Pigot’s Directory of 1824 the barracks housed two companies of foot, had apartments for three officers, a bomb and waterproof magazine and an artillery battery mounting three 12-pound guns. The Directory also states that the barracks was formerly a nunnery which quite possibly could have been that of St. Rynagh and would line up with the idea that an earlier structure had existed prior to the building of the fort. Banagher ceased activities as a garrison town when the British garrison left the town in 1863, however the barracks was looted and burned shortly after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty 1921-22 as were many British built structures across the country during the Irish Revolutionary Period.