These features may be all that remains of Dysart Castle and its bawn, structures recorded in a 1609 land grant to Sir Robert Nugent of Walshestown. The grant paints a picture of a thriving manor estate, complete with not just the castle and its defensive stone bawn, but also a hall, stables, two barns, a haggard, forty dwellings, fifty gardens, and even a fish pond; quite the prosperous settlement for early 17th-century Ireland.

The later Dysart House appears to have been built on or near the site of the original castle, though its ruins are now marked only on old Ordnance Survey maps. The earthworks visible today spread across the fields east of Dysart church and graveyard, offering tantalising glimpses of the estate’s medieval layout. These undulating features in the landscape, best seen from above in digital aerial photography from 2011, likely represent the foundations of the castle’s defensive walls, the outline of the bawn, and perhaps traces of those numerous messuages and gardens mentioned in the historical records.

Sir Robert Nugent’s acquisition of the manor of Disert, as it was then spelled, came during the Plantation period when many Irish lands were redistributed to English and Scottish settlers. The presence of a lough, or small lake, alongside the fish pond suggests the estate was largely self-sufficient, whilst the substantial number of dwellings indicates it supported a considerable population. Today, these layers of history; from medieval fortification to plantation manor to later country house; create a palimpsest in the Westmeath landscape that continues to intrigue historians and archaeologists alike.