In a field in Bananstown, County Westmeath, what was once a substantial enclosed settlement now survives only as a faint scarp, a barely perceptible drop in the ground that you might walk across without registering its significance. A ringfort, for those unfamiliar with the form, is a roughly circular enclosure bounded by an earthen bank and ditch, typically dating from the early medieval period and used as a farmstead or place of habitation. Most of Ireland's surviving examples still carry some presence on the landscape. This one has been reduced to almost nothing.

The 1837 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded the site clearly as an oval-shaped enclosure, measuring approximately 36 metres north to south and 27 metres east to west, set on a gentle natural rise among undulating grassland. That rise, a subtle geographical advantage that would have made the original site attractive to whoever built and occupied it, is still there. The enclosure is not. The townland boundary with Johnstown cuts across its western side, and the boundary with Drumcree runs immediately to the south, placing the site at a meeting point of three townlands. A second ringfort survives around 100 metres to the west, and Lough Adeel lies roughly 850 metres to the east, a reminder that this corner of Westmeath was once a more populated and organised landscape than the empty grassland now suggests.