Castle in Kilpatrick

Situated on a low rise of ground in grass-land, sloping down to lower poorly drained land at E and SE. Church (WM013-002---) and graveyard (WM013-002001-) 180m to SE. In 1632 an inquiry into the estate of the deceased Walter Browne who died on the 25th of March 1611 recorded that he possessed 2 castles 20 messuages, 20 gardens & 180 acres of land in the townland of Kilpatrick also known as Dorsankill (Cal. inq. post mortem, 76, Car I). This Inquisition Post Mortem also recorded that Walter possessed a castle (WM012-211----) in the nearby townland of Tuitestown. The estate belonging to Walter was inherited by his son William who was 30 years of age at the time of his death. The lands of Kilpatrick alias Dorsankill were held as a tenant to Lancelot Bulkeley Archbishop of Dublin (ibid.). No castle is depicted in this townland on the 1657 Down Survey map of Kilpatrick Parish (NLI MS 723-4). In 1641 the lands of Kilpatrick amounting to 314 acres were in the ownership of William Browne who is listed in the terrier of the Down Survey as an 'Irish Papist'. Depicted on the 1837 OS Fair Plan map as a number of rectangular buildings in a farmyard that is annotated as 'Old Castle’. On this map the buildings are depicted as upstanding structures and not as ruinous buildings. All that remains are a number of low grass-covered mounds of stone representing the collapsed rubble of the 'Old Castle'. To the W of these mounds there is a large sub-rectangular shaped area defined by a low earthen bank with external fosse visible from E through S to SW.