The 1839 Ordnance Survey six-inch map confidently labels this spot as the ‘site of Castle’, yet no historical records before or after seem to support this claim. When surveyors documented Irish lands during the Civil Survey of the 1640s, they recorded that Robert Roche, described as an Irish papist, owned 128 acres here in 1641; but they made no mention of any fortification. The Down Survey maps, drawn between 1655 and 1658, similarly show no castle at this location.

Today, the supposed castle site lies within a coniferous forest on flat, low-lying ground, with a small stream running northwest to southeast about thirty metres to the southwest. Local memory offers a different story for this place; residents know it not for phantom fortifications but for its industrial past. The area once hosted flax retting ponds, essential for processing linen fibres, and two earthen banks running northwest to southeast still mark where these water-filled trenches once stood.

Archaeological investigations have turned up nothing to suggest a castle ever stood here, with no visible remains at ground level to support the map’s tantalising notation. Whether the 1839 cartographer was recording local folklore, misinterpreting earlier features, or simply making an error remains a mystery. What seems certain is that Latimerstown’s ‘castle’ exists only in the realm of cartographic ghosts; a reminder that even official maps can sometimes lead us astray in our search for Ireland’s medieval past.