Known locally as Castle Field, this unassuming patch of farmland once housed a castle that belonged to the Mountgarret family, Irish Catholic nobles who held sway over the entire townland. The structure appears on the Down Survey maps of 1655-6, drawn during Cromwell’s redistribution of Irish lands, where it’s described as ‘a little Castle and House in Repaire at Clintstowne with some Cabbins’. By 1839, the Ordnance Survey recorded only a rectangular ruined building measuring roughly 16 by 5 metres, oriented north-northwest to south-southeast.

The castle’s physical presence gradually disappeared from both the landscape and official records. Local historian Carrigan noted in 1905 that the ruins had been removed around 1860, leaving only memories and the field’s telling name. The 1947 Ordnance Survey map shows no trace of any structure at all, completing the castle’s journey from fortified residence to rubble to empty field.

Yet the ground hasn’t entirely forgotten what once stood here. During the 1950s, cannon balls were discovered in the field, tangible reminders of the castle’s defensive past, though these artefacts have since gone missing. Today, nothing remains visible at ground level; the castle exists only in historical documents, old maps, and the persistent local tradition that gave the field its name. It’s a peculiarly Irish phenomenon, these ghost castles that live on in placenames and parish memory long after their stones have been carted away for other purposes.