Somewhere in the townland of Parslickstown, in north County Dublin, there once stood a structure substantial enough to be recorded as a castle, yet today its precise location is entirely unknown. It exists in the historical record as little more than a name and a general area, a building that has slipped out of the landscape without leaving a visible trace.

The principal source for this structure is the Civil Survey of 1654 to 1656, a detailed administrative document compiled in the aftermath of the Cromwellian conquest to record land ownership and property across Ireland. Among its entries is a reference to a castle in a place recorded as 'Pastorstowne', which researchers, including compiler Geraldine Stout, associate with the present-day townland of Parslickstown. The term 'castle' in this period did not necessarily imply a large fortified tower. It was often applied to a fortified house of the kind common among landed families in sixteenth and seventeenth century Ireland, sometimes built around a bawn, which was a walled enclosure used to protect livestock and inhabitants alike. Beyond this single documentary mention, no further details survive about who built it, who occupied it, or what became of it.

There is no site to visit here in any conventional sense. Parslickstown is a rural townland, and without knowing where within it the structure once stood, even a methodical search of the ground would offer little guidance. What makes this entry quietly compelling is precisely that absence. The Civil Survey was a practical document, concerned with measurement and ownership rather than atmosphere, and yet its passing reference to a castle in 'Pastorstowne' preserves the faintest outline of a building that has otherwise vanished entirely, leaving the landscape with no obvious scar or clue.