What is recorded here

Baskin Castle vanished from every later map, leaving behind only a tower-house drawing on the 1655-9 Down Survey and a reminder that places can be known through absence as much as memory. It stood on lands belonging to Henry and Richard Dillon in Drumrany parish, County Westmeath, with a single-storey house joined to one side and a chimney piercing the roofline. The castle may have been small, practical and quietly defiant, the kind of home where fire smoke, rain and human argument filled every room. Its lost position does not diminish it; it makes the drawing a gift, preserving the shape of what the earth forgot.

The precise location of Baskin Castle has not been identified. The castle is depicted on the 1655-9 Down Survey map of Drumrany parish (NLI, MS 723-4). On this map the castle is depicted as a tower house type structure with single storey house built onto one side of the castle. On this house which probably dates form the late 16th or early 17th century there is a lateral chimney stack depicted rising above the roofline of the house. The terrier of the Down Survey map of Drumraney parish records that the castle stood on lands belonging to Henry and Richard Dillon. The castle is not depicted on any edition of the OS 6-inch maps. There is no evidence to suggest that Baskin House was built on the site of the medieval castle. Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of upload: 10 October 2016

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