Ringfort (Rath), Derrynagarragh, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
In a field in Derrynagarragh, County Westmeath, the ground holds the faint outline of a life that was once carefully bounded and organised.
What survives is a sub-circular enclosure, roughly 28 metres across from north to south and 27 metres east to west, formed by an earthen bank and a wide external fosse, the fosse being the defensive ditch that would originally have reinforced the bank's height. Both are poorly preserved; the fosse has filled in almost entirely over the centuries, and the bank itself is barely legible in the pasture. These are ringforts, known in Irish as raths when built from earth rather than stone, the most common type of early medieval settlement in Ireland. Thousands survive across the island in varying states of erosion, each one originally enclosing a farmstead, probably occupied between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries.
This particular example sits on the north-east face of a gentle slope, with a prominent hill rising to the north-east and a second ringfort recorded approximately 215 metres to the south-south-west. That proximity is worth pausing over. Two enclosures within a few hundred metres of one another suggest a landscape that was once actively farmed and settled, perhaps by related households working adjoining land. Inside the enclosure, the ground slopes slightly from north-west to south-east, and faint traces of cultivation ridges are still visible beneath the grass, the corrugated remains of a system of raised planting beds that may post-date the ringfort's original use or may reflect its later agricultural reoccupation. Neither detail announces itself dramatically; both repay slow, low-angled observation, particularly in winter or early spring when grass is short and raking light sharpens surface irregularities.