At Dunnamona, aerial photography has revealed what the casual eye misses: an irregular enclosed area roughly fifty metres across, its boundary still tracing a faint circuit through the grassland. Enclosures of this kind, defined by an earthen bank rather than stone, were used across Ireland for a range of purposes, from the ringforts that served as early medieval farmsteads to stock enclosures and ceremonial spaces, and without excavation it is rarely straightforward to assign a single function or date to one.

What makes this particular spot quietly interesting is its company. A motte and bailey castle sits roughly 250 metres to the north. A motte and bailey is a form of castle introduced to Ireland by the Normans after the twelfth-century invasion, consisting of a raised earthen mound, the motte, paired with an adjoining enclosed courtyard, the bailey. A second enclosure lies about 78 metres to the east-southeast, and linear earthworks occupy the field immediately to the northeast. Taken together, these features suggest a landscape that was actively shaped and organised over a long period, with different phases of activity leaving overlapping marks in the soil. Whether the enclosure predates the Norman castle or relates to it in some way is not established, but their proximity in this relatively small area of Westmeath grassland is the kind of spatial relationship that tends to interest archaeologists.