Locals, however, know the spot as 'Black Tom's Cellars', a name that quietly preserves the memory of a substantial house that has otherwise left no trace above ground.

The house was built by Lord Stafford before 1637, and the figure behind the nickname is almost certainly Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of Strafford, the notoriously hard-edged Lord Deputy of Ireland who governed on behalf of Charles I and was executed in 1641. 'Black Tom' was a common popular epithet for Wentworth, reflecting his reputation for severity. The foundations of the structure survived long enough to be recorded by the scholar Liam Price in 1946, but by now even those traces have vanished beneath the farm buildings that occupy the site. What remains is the place name, clinging on in local speech as a kind of unofficial monument, long after the stones themselves disappeared.