Ringfort, Ballynagall, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
On the demesne lands of Ballynagall House in County Westmeath, a circular earthwork sits quietly in open grassland, its outline persistent enough to have been captured on every edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps and, as recently as November 2011, clearly legible from the air in a Digital Globe aerial photograph.
That kind of continuity across centuries of cartography is not unusual for ringforts, but it is worth pausing on. These circular enclosures, typically formed by one or more earthen banks and ditches, were the standard farmstead type in early medieval Ireland, built and occupied roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. That this one has remained visible rather than ploughed out or built over says something about the relative stability of the landscape around it.
The ringfort lies on the demesne of Ballynagall House, meaning it has long sat within the managed private lands attached to a country estate, which may partly explain its survival. The eastern shoreline of Lough Owel lies approximately 530 metres to the west, placing the site in that quiet band of country between the lake and the house grounds. Lough Owel itself has considerable early historical associations, and this part of Westmeath was well settled in the early medieval period, though the notes available for this particular enclosure do not extend to excavation records or any documented finds.
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