Ringfort (Rath), Ballynalone, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
In the wet pasture of Ballynalone, Co. Westmeath, a ringfort sits on a gentle rise that is barely distinguishable from the surrounding low-lying ground, and yet it is formally protected by law and, by most modern accounts, effectively invisible.
Aerial photography shows no surface remains whatsoever, which places this site in an odd category: a legally preserved monument that has, to all appearances, been swallowed by the landscape.
When it was recorded, the fort was classified as bivallate, meaning it had not one but two enclosing earthen banks, separated by an intervening fosse, or ditch, ringing a roughly oval interior of about 35 metres across. Ringforts of this type were typically the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, occupied roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and the double-bank arrangement generally indicates a settlement of some local status. The interior here retained traces of old cultivation ridges running northeast to southwest, faint corrugations in the ground that speak to generations of agricultural use long after the fort's original purpose had lapsed. The monument was considered best preserved along its southwestern and western arc, but even that partial survival has been complicated by a deep drainage channel and field boundary cutting through the northeastern quadrant, severing a section of the interior. A Preservation Order was placed on the site in November 1983, an attempt to arrest further deterioration, though the subsequent aerial evidence suggests the earthworks have continued to fade into the pasture around them.

