Ringfort (Rath), Cavestown And Rosmead, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
At the boundary between County Westmeath and County Meath, with a river running just 170 metres to the northwest, a low earthen ring sits on a natural hillock in open grassland.
It is easy to miss, and in some directions the bank has been almost entirely levelled, but the underlying geometry persists: a sub-circular enclosure roughly 33 metres north to south and 31 metres east to west, with a slight inward rise towards the centre that gives the interior a quiet, bowl-like quality. What makes it linger in the mind is the entrance, a gap just 1.7 metres wide on the southeastern side, its edges still lined with stone facing, as though the threshold was the one element worth preserving through all the centuries of agricultural attrition.
This is a rath, a type of earthen ringfort built predominantly during the early medieval period in Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Raths were typically enclosed farmsteads, their encircling banks and external ditches, known as a fosse, serving as much to contain livestock and signal status as to provide any serious military defence. Tens of thousands once dotted the Irish countryside; this example in Cavestown and Rosmead is a modest specimen, its single bank and shallow fosse placing it towards the plainer end of the scale. Modern field fences now cut across the monument at its northwestern and eastern sides, a reminder of how thoroughly the working landscape has been reorganised around and through these ancient boundaries since the time they were first raised.