What makes it worth a second look is the way its wings extend in a continuous, straight line from the main block, terminating in small pavilions, an arrangement described by architectural historians as being in the Vanbrugh manner. Sir John Vanbrugh, the English baroque architect responsible for Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace, favoured exactly this kind of lateral spread, using wings and pavilions to give a house a sense of ceremony and scale that the central block alone could not achieve. To find that compositional logic applied in brick on the County Dublin fringe is, to put it plainly, unexpected.

The architectural historian Maurice Craig, writing in 1976, drew attention to several details that help fix the building's date and connections. The doorcase, he noted, belongs to a type also found in the Upper Castle Yard in Dublin, linking Haystown to the formal architectural culture of the city's administrative centre. The narrow windows, set in flush frames without the projecting surrounds that became fashionable later in the century, point to a date in the first quarter of the 1700s. Taken together, these features suggest a builder or patron who was aware of what was being done in Dublin and who wanted something of that civic seriousness applied to a rural or semi-rural setting. The research was compiled by Geraldine Stout and uploaded to the record in August 2011.

Haystown lies in north County Dublin, and the house is not a formal visitor attraction, so anyone making their way there should approach it as a piece of architectural fieldwork rather than a managed experience. The exterior is the thing here; the brick fabric, the proportions of the wings, and the relationship between the central block and its pavilions are what repay attention. Craig's observations about the windows are particularly useful as a focusing device: look at how the frames sit flush with the wall surface, and consider how different the effect would be with projecting stonework around each opening. The building is most legible in winter or early spring, when the surrounding vegetation is thinner and the full composition of the facade and its extended wings can be read at once.