Ringfort (Rath), Loughanstown, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
In the grasslands of Loughanstown, a low earthen bank curves almost imperceptibly through the landscape, easy to miss against the ordinary geometry of field fences.
What it describes, though, is anything but ordinary: a ringfort, the kind of enclosed circular settlement that farmers and minor lords built across Ireland throughout the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation, and this one in County Westmeath sits quietly at the lower end of that spectrum, its bank worn down to little more than a scarp, the kind of gentle ridge you might cross without noticing.
The site is roughly circular, approximately thirty metres across from east to west. Its enclosing bank has largely been absorbed into the surrounding field boundaries; at the south-west and north-east, the modern field fences actually follow the line of the original bank, meaning the landscape has quietly preserved the fort's outline even as the bank itself has all but disappeared. A gap in the scarp on the east-south-east side may mark where the original entrance once stood, a detail that gives some orientation to what is otherwise a fairly ambiguous earthwork. The interior slopes gently downward from west to east, and a shallow trench running roughly north to south cuts through the monument; this appears to be of recent origin rather than anything ancient. The fort sits on a gentle slope with open views to the south and east, a positioning that would have made good practical sense to whoever enclosed this ground. A second ringfort lies roughly two hundred metres to the north-west, a reminder that these sites rarely existed in isolation but were part of wider farmed and settled landscapes.