Ringfort (Rath), Ranaghan, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ranaghan, Co. Westmeath

On the south-south-eastern face of a prominent hill in County Westmeath, there is a ringfort that is barely there at all.

Its earthen bank has worn so low, and its surrounding fosse, or defensive ditch, eroded so thoroughly, that the enclosure only became clearly legible when a Digital Globe aerial photograph taken in November 2011 caught it as a faint crop mark, the kind of ghostly outline that grass and soil produce when ancient earthworks alter the moisture and density of the ground above them. At ground level, you might walk across it without pausing.

What the site preserves, even in this diminished state, is the essential grammar of an early medieval Irish ringfort, a rath, which was typically a circular or near-circular enclosure defined by a bank and ditch, used as a farmstead or family enclosure across much of the first millennium. This example is sub-circular, measuring roughly 27 metres north-west to south-east and 25.5 metres north-east to south-west. A narrow entrance gap, just 1.7 metres wide, opens at the south-east, with a low causeway, 5 metres wide and a quarter of a metre high, carrying a path across the fosse. The interior slopes gently from north to south and contains shallow, irregular hollows that appear to be natural rather than the product of human activity. A second ringfort sits approximately 300 metres to the south-east, suggesting this part of the hill may once have supported more than one enclosed settlement in close proximity, a pattern not unusual in the Irish landscape but still worth remarking on.

The site commands extensive views across a wide arc from north-east through east and south to south-west, which would have made it a legible and strategically sensible location for whoever built and used it. The bank and fosse are now poorly preserved, and there is little on the surface to reward a casual visit, but the setting on the hillside gives a reasonable sense of why this particular spot was chosen in the first place.

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Pete F
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