The people who hid them fled in a hurry and, as far as the record shows, never came back for what they left behind.

The Tobins were the family associated with Ballytobin, a name that preserves their memory in the landscape even now. When Cromwell's forces moved through the region, the family apparently abandoned the place at speed, dropping items of value into a draw-well somewhere between their own residence and a second house to the north. That second house, roughly 180 metres away, later became associated with the Hall family. In 1653, the lands of Ballaghtobin and Croghtabegg, recorded as the property of one David Tobin, were granted to Ralph Hall and William Baker, part of the broader Cromwellian redistribution of Irish land. The well's exact position has never been established, and the objects, whatever they were, have not been recovered. The Reverend William Carrigan, writing in 1905, noted that the story was already a matter of tradition by his time rather than documented fact. He also suggested that the present Ballytobin House probably sits on or very close to the site of the older Tobin castle or residence. A mid-seventeenth-century map, the Down Survey of 1655 to 1656, shows a castle and two houses in the townland as it was then named, and it is possible that fabric from one or both of those structures is incorporated into, or survives near, the building that stands today.