WestmeathHeritage Guide

Westmeath’s landscape has been shaped by ice. Around 15,000 years ago, retreating glaciers – vast sheets of ice hundreds of metres thick – left behind a landscape full of ridges, hollows, lakes and strangely-shaped stones.

Long gravel ridges still snake across the midlands today. These are eskers – a word that comes from the Irish eiscir, meaning a ridge. When the ice melted, riverbeds that had run beneath it were left standing as raised gravel banks. The Split Hills and Long Hill Esker, running between Kilbeggan and Tyrrellspass, is one of the finest examples in Ireland.

Retreating ice also carried boulders across the landscape and dropped them as it melted – rocks that formed elsewhere and now sit oddly among Westmeath’s limestone. These are called glacial erratics. One of the county’s most famous examples stands on the Hill of Uisneach and is known as the Catstone.

Westmeath is defined by water. The Shannon, Ireland’s longest river, forms the county’s western boundary, and its lakes have shaped the landscape since the last ice age.

The River Brosna rises in Lough Owel and flows south through Mullingar and into Lough Ennell, before continuing west to join the Shannon. It drains much of the county’s interior through farmland and bog.

Lough Ennell, Lough Owel, Lough Ree and Lough Derravaragh each shaped a different corner of the county.

Westmeath’s lakes host thousands of overwintering waterbirds, including whooper swans arriving from Iceland, Greenland white-fronted geese and golden plover gathering in huge flocks across the wet grasslands.

Many of Westmeath’s lakes and their surroundings are so important for nature that they have been designated as Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) and Special Protection Areas (SPA) – meaning the water, the plants and the animals that depend on them must be looked after for the future.

Bogs cover almost 10% of Westmeath. They are among the oldest and most important ecosystems in Ireland.

After the last ice age, forest covered around 80% of Ireland. Centuries of clearance for farming, fuel and building reduced that to just 1% by the early 20th century. Today forest covers about 11% of the country – but only 2% is native woodland.

Mullaghmeen, the county’s highest point, is home to the largest planted beech forest in Ireland.

Ardan Wood, near Kilbeggan, is different. This is one of the last true fragments of Ireland’s original native woodland, documented as continuously wooded since at least the 1600s. Its oak trees may even share genetic lineage with some of the first trees to colonise Ireland after the last ice age.

People have lived in Westmeath for at least 9,000 years. The earliest settlers arrived after the last ice age, moving through a landscape of lakes, rivers and forest.

The Mesolithic period, roughly 10,000 to 6,000 years ago, is the earliest chapter of human life in Ireland. These were hunter-gatherers – small groups moving with the seasons, fishing the rivers and lakes, leaving behind stone tools and the occasional trace of a camp site.

Farming reached Westmeath in the Neolithic period, from around 4000 BC. These early farmers also built monuments and buried their dead with care, a tradition that carried on into the Bronze Age from about 2500 BC.

The Mayne Bog Trackway is a Bronze Age wooden roadway found in bogland near Coole in 2005. It dates back more than 3,000 years, runs for around 800 metres and averages almost 5 metres wide – a huge construction that swallowed enormous quantities of ancient woodland, including hundreds of mature oak trees.

Timbers were laid across soft ground so people and animals could cross the bog, linking higher ground at Mayne with the River Inny to the east.

Near the village of Loughnavalley, in the centre of Westmeath, stands a low hill that was once considered the centre of all Ireland.

Few upstanding monuments remain on the hill today, but for thousands of years Uisneach was regarded as one of the most important places in the country. People left behind burial tombs, earthworks, holy wells and traces of settlement right across it. Early Irish texts and medieval tradition describe Uisneach as the meeting point of the five provinces of Ireland.

Uisneach was a place of ritual and assembly. The goddess Ériu, one of the mythological embodiments of Ireland itself, is said to be buried here.

An Táin Bó Cúailnge – the great Cattle Raid of Cooley – is one of the oldest stories in European literature. It follows the armies of Queen Medb of Connacht as they march east through the midlands towards Ulster, out to capture the great brown bull of Cooley.

The story passes straight through Westmeath, and some of its most dramatic events happen here. Parts of the county still carry names linked to the tale.

The final battle of the Táin takes place near Ballymore, where the men of Ulster catch up with Medb’s retreating army.

On the eve of the battle the Ulster warriors gather at Slemain Midi – now Slanemore Hill, north-west of Mullingar – and build a great mound for their leader, King Conchobar mac Nessa. In the centre of the fighting stands Cúchulainn, warped in battle-fury, while above them all looms Némain, the Goddess of War.

After the Last Battle, Medb’s wounded warriors retreated to Athais Midhe, now Knockastia Hill, to dress their wounds. Her army was driven westwards from Uisneach as the men of Ulster pursued them back towards the Shannon.

Across early medieval Ireland, families often lived inside circular farmsteads protected by banks and ditches, called ringforts. Hundreds once stood across Westmeath, though most survive today only as faint rings in fields or low grassy banks.

People also built crannógs – small artificial islands used as homes and strongholds for thousands of years. Lough Ennell and Lough Derravaragh both hold them.

The crannóg on Lough Ennell is linked to Malachy II, also known as Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill or Máel Sechnaill Mór – High King of Ireland, and a descendant of Malachy I.

Five questions, drawn at random. Finish a round and you can pull five more.

For thousands of years, the people of Westmeath lived among ringforts, crannógs and early Christian monasteries. Everything changed in the late twelfth century when the Anglo-Normans arrived.

Unlike the Gaelic kingdoms they encountered, the Normans established control by building castles. Their first fortifications were usually mottes and baileys – simple but highly effective strongholds that could be thrown up in a matter of weeks. Placed beside important roads, rivers and settlements, they let small groups of soldiers hold newly conquered ground while the advance carried on.

In 1172, King Henry II granted the vast Lordship of Meath to Hugh de Lacy. Over the following decades, de Lacy and his followers reshaped the landscape, raising mottes at strategic points right across the county. More than 800 years later, those earthworks are still some of the earliest visible reminders of the Norman arrival.

The first Norman forts were meant as rapid military strongholds rather than permanent castles. As the newcomers settled in, some mottes stayed in use and others were replaced by stronger stone castles. Five sites tell the story between them.

Built in 1192, the motte at Ardnurcher – also known as Horseleap – became the centre of a thriving Norman borough, granted formal town status by 1235. Today it survives as one of Ireland’s best-preserved deserted medieval towns, its earthworks still clearly visible.

Moate owes its name directly to its Norman beginnings. The Irish An Móta simply means ‘the mound’, after the great motte that still stands at the centre of the town.

A Norman-era motte survives in the village. Its name records what happened next: the MacGeoghegans, a powerful Gaelic family, took control of a settlement the Normans had built.

Fore’s motte stands beside the remains of the medieval town and its Benedictine abbey – a reminder that military power and religious influence usually grew up side by side.

The first Norman castles went up quickly, in timber, and were never meant to last. As the settlers secured their lands, many replaced those wooden forts with stone castles that could stand up to attack, to fire and to time.

Over the centuries that followed, castles became far more than strongholds. They were family homes, centres of local government and statements of power. Some belonged to Anglo-Norman lords. Others were taken over, or built from scratch, by Gaelic families using the same styles of defence.

Westmeath today holds one of the richest collections of medieval castles in the Irish midlands. Some survive almost intact. Others are roofless towers or ivy-covered ruins, each keeping hold of part of the county’s long and often violent history.

Athlone is Westmeath’s largest medieval castle, but dozens of smaller tower houses once stood across the county. Built between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, they protected local estates, advertised the wealth of powerful families and gave them somewhere secure to live in uncertain times.

Built around 1410 by the Tyrrell family, this five-storey tower house became famous during the Nine Years’ War. In 1597 Richard Tyrrell used the surrounding woodland and bogs to ambush a far larger English force. The castle is a hotel today.

This fortified house near Clonmellon dates from the early seventeenth century. The same estate has stayed in the hands of just two families – the O’Reillys and then the Nugents – for more than four hundred years.

Westmeath’s remaining castles each hold a different chapter – Gaelic lordships, local legends, Victorian architecture and one remarkable act of kindness.

Moate Castle stands a short walk from the great motte that gave the town its name, and probably began as a medieval tower house. It passed to the Dillon family, was confiscated during the Cromwellian period and was bought in 1655 by Captain John Clibborn, whose descendants stayed connected with it for generations.

This small tower house, on the road towards Longford north-west of Mullingar, is a reminder that not every medieval castle was built to dominate a town or a crossing. Most simply protected local estates and farming communities.

The Normans changed far more than Westmeath’s castles. Around important river crossings, monasteries and strongholds, new towns began to appear. Many were carefully planned, with streets laid out inside protective walls and gates. Markets drew merchants, craftsmen opened workshops and communities grew up around trade, farming and religion.

Not every settlement survived. Some prospered and became the towns we know today. Others fell away after warfare, or when trade routes shifted, or when a nearby monastery closed. Their streets disappeared under fields and woodland, leaving ruined walls, earthworks and place names that still hint at what was there.

Two of these are still busy places. Two of them are fields.

Founded by the Normans in the late twelfth century, Ardnurcher became a successful borough with formal town status by 1235. Its fortunes later fell away and the place was abandoned altogether. It survives as one of Ireland’s best-preserved deserted medieval towns, where the outlines of streets, buildings and earthworks can still be traced across the fields.

Five fresh questions. Nothing you have already been asked comes back.

Long before castles dominated Westmeath’s landscape, monasteries had already changed it.

From the early Christian period, monks set up communities across the county where they prayed, copied manuscripts, took in travellers, cared for the sick and farmed the land around them. These became some of Ireland’s earliest centres of learning, drawing pilgrims and scholars from well beyond Westmeath.

After the Normans arrived, many older monasteries carried on while new orders – Benedictines, Augustinians and Franciscans – founded houses of their own. Between them they left abbeys, priories and parish churches right across the county, and a surprising number of them are still standing.

Set in a quiet valley north of Lough Lene, Fore Abbey is one of Ireland’s finest medieval monastic sites.

The great stone buildings you see today are mostly Norman, but Fore’s story starts around AD 630, when St Féichín founded an early Christian monastery here. Over the centuries it grew into one of the most important religious settlements in the country, and pilgrims came from everywhere to reach it.

What survives – churches, gateways, wells, mills and crosses – still shows the scale of the community that lived here.

For centuries, pilgrims came to Fore to see seven marvels, said to have been left by St Féichín as signs of God’s power. Tap each one to find out what it was.

Westmeath’s religious heritage stretches far beyond Fore. Across the county, monasteries, priories and parish churches hold the story of medieval faith, learning and community.

Many of Westmeath’s medieval churches stand roofless now. Each still holds part of the story – some tied to early saints, others to Norman lords and powerful Gaelic families.

Franciscan friars first settled in Athlone around 1235. The friary was suppressed during the Reformation, but the community went on serving local people for centuries afterwards. The ruins in the Old Abbey Graveyard are what survives of it.

Close to the Hill of Uisneach, Aedh’s Church shows how tightly medieval religion and ruling families were bound together. For generations it stayed closely associated with the MacGeoghegans, one of Westmeath’s leading Gaelic dynasties.

Ruined and overgrown today, Lynn is closely connected with St Colman – and one of his miracles is the reason Mullingar has the Irish name it does.

By the eighteenth century the age of castles was over. Wealthy landowning families across Westmeath stopped building walls and towers and started building elegant country houses instead, set inside carefully planned estates.

Their homes looked out over lakes, rivers and parkland. Architects, gardeners and foresters reshaped the land around them with tree-lined avenues, ornamental lakes, walled gardens and follies.

These estates were also large employers, giving work to gardeners, blacksmiths, carpenters, stable hands and household staff. Many later fell into ruin or vanished completely. Others are now among the county’s finest heritage attractions.

Standing on the shores of Lough Ennell, Belvedere House is one of Ireland’s finest Georgian country houses, known for its elaborate plasterwork ceilings. It was built in the 1740s for Robert Rochfort, 1st Earl of Belvedere, and it reflects two things at once – his wealth, and one of the most famous family feuds in Irish history.

Woodland, lakeside walks and designed gardens surround it. The whole place was built to impress visitors, and it still does.

Belvedere’s best-known feature is not the house or the gardens. It is an enormous stone wall built for no reason but spite.

After a bitter falling-out with his brother George, whose house at Tudenham overlooked Belvedere, Robert Rochfort had the wall put up around 1760 to block the view completely. It worked.

It still stands, it is believed to be the largest folly in Ireland, and it has become one of the county’s most recognisable landmarks.

Few events changed Irish history as sharply as the Siege of Athlone in 1691.

For weeks, Jacobite defenders held the western side of the town while Williamite forces tried to force a crossing of the Shannon. Assault after assault failed. Then soldiers got across the river under heavy fire, and the town fell after fierce fighting in the streets.

It was the turning point of the Williamite War. It opened the way to the Battle of Aughrim only weeks later, and had Athlone held, the whole war might have gone differently.

Athlone Castle and surviving stretches of the old town still carry the memory of it.

Westmeath saw plenty of other fighting. Some of it lasted only hours, and still changed things far beyond the county.

One of the opening clashes of the Williamite War in the midlands happened at Ballymore. In June 1691, Williamite forces under General Godert de Ginkell pushed through Westmeath towards Athlone, set on breaking Jacobite resistance west of the Shannon.

After a short artillery bombardment the Jacobite defenders gave up Ballymore Castle and its earthworks. The battle was brief, but it opened the road to Athlone and everything that followed.

Conflict did not end with castles and sieges. Centuries later, people from Westmeath were caught up in events that reached far beyond Ireland.

On the western bank of the Shannon, Athlone’s No. 1 Gun Battery was built by the British Army between 1803 and 1806 against the threat of a French invasion. It is one of the few surviving Napoleonic-era artillery forts in Ireland, and it is being conserved as a heritage site.

Round three. Fifty questions in the bank, so there is plenty left.

Every townland, hill, river and field has a name, and many of those names are far older than the places we know today.

Some describe the landscape – a hill, a marsh, a wood. Others remember forgotten families, vanished monasteries or things that happened hundreds of years ago. A great many hold on to Irish words that have dropped out of everyday speech, which makes placenames one of the best records of our history that we have.

Even individual fields often carry names handed down from one generation to the next. They rarely appear on any map, but they tell you about farming, local families and how the land has changed.

Across Westmeath, volunteers are still recording traditional placenames so they are not lost.

Four Westmeath places, and what their names were trying to tell you.

An Muileann gCearr means ‘the left-handed’, or crooked, ‘mill’. Historians still argue about exactly which medieval mill gave the town its odd name.

An Móta means ‘the mound’, after the great Norman motte that stood at the centre of the settlement.

Áth Luain means ‘the Ford of the Loin’. In An Táin, the Brown Bull of Cooley tears his rival apart and scatters the pieces across Ireland, dropping the White-Horned Bull’s loin into the Shannon here.

Fobhar means ‘the springs’, after the many natural springs that rise around the village – which is worth remembering when you get to the well that never boils.

Westmeath’s story does not end with castles, abbeys and ancient monuments.

For centuries, people connected with the county have shaped music, science, literature, exploration, politics and sport. Some were born here. Others made Westmeath their home. All of them carried the county’s name a long way past its borders.

What follows is fourteen of them.