Ringfort (Rath), Emper, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Emper, Co. Westmeath

In the flat grassland of Emper in County Westmeath, a low, barely perceptible curve of earth marks the remains of a ringfort, the kind of early medieval enclosure that once numbered in the tens of thousands across Ireland.

At roughly thirty metres in diameter, this particular example is so reduced by time and agricultural pressure that only the western to northern arc of its enclosing bank survives in any readable form. The rest has been levelled entirely, leaving little for the casual eye to catch at ground level.

A ringfort, or rath, was typically a circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, used in early medieval Ireland as a farmstead or place of habitation. This one sits on a slight rise within otherwise flat land, a position that would have offered reasonable sightlines to the south, even if the elevation is modest. It is not alone in the area; another ringfort lies approximately 120 metres to the north-west, suggesting this was once a settled and inhabited stretch of countryside. What remains visible today is largely confirmed not by walking the ground but from aerial photography, with the outline of the levelled monument still discernible on a Digital Globe photograph taken in November 2011, a reminder that traces of the past sometimes survive better as cropmarks and soil shadows than as upstanding earthworks.

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