Moated site, Ballynameagh, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

Castle Features

Moated site, Ballynameagh, Co. Westmeath

The moated site at Ballynameagh in County Westmeath sits on a slightly elevated patch of ground, offering a modest advantage over the surrounding wet, poorly drained landscape.

A stream flows about 80 metres to the west, whilst the Rock of Curry and the Hill of Mael can be spotted 1.8 and 2.8 kilometres to the east-northeast respectively. Though the monument itself has long since vanished from view at ground level, modern technology has revealed its ghostly outline; Digital Globe aerial photographs from November 2011 captured cropmarks that trace the footprint of this levelled enclosure, with old cultivation ridges running east to west across its surface like faint scars on the land.

Historical records paint a picture of what once stood here. The 1837 Ordnance Survey six-inch map depicts a roughly rectangular enclosure, and an Office of Public Works report from 1966 offers a wonderfully matter-of-fact description of what remained at that time: 'rectangular enclosure with slight bank and old thorn trees on bank. An oldish field or garden on edge of long (alt 200-300 ft) with shelter belt of thorns. Not ancient in appearance but not now used as a separate field'. The surveyor seemed rather unimpressed, noting it didn't look particularly ancient, though by then it had already fallen out of use as a distinct field.

Today, visitors to Ballynameagh would find no visible traces of this moated site without knowing exactly where to look. The monument has been completely levelled, its banks and ditches filled in and smoothed over by time and agriculture. Yet beneath the surface, the soil remembers; those cropmarks captured from above serve as a reminder that the Irish landscape is layered with history, even when that history has been ploughed flat and returned to farmland.

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