Ringfort (Rath), Creggy, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
On a gentle east-facing slope in County Westmeath, just inside the townland boundary with Kippin, a low circular earthwork survives quietly in a grass field.
It is easy to overlook, as such things often are, but the shape beneath the turf belongs to a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common monument type in the Irish landscape. These were typically enclosed farmsteads of the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, their circular banks and ditches defining a domestic space rather than a military one.
This particular example is sub-circular in plan, measuring approximately 27 metres north to south and 24 metres east to west. It is enclosed by a low bank of earth and stone, with an external fosse, or ditch, that has largely silted and levelled over time and is now only legible along the northern arc. A narrow entrance gap, just 1.4 metres wide, survives at the east-south-east. The interior tilts gently downward from west to east, following the natural slope of the rise. A modern field fence cuts across the monument from the south-east, intersecting the perimeter and running roughly east-north-east to west-south-west, a common enough indignity visited on earthworks that have outlasted the memory of what they once were. From the northern, eastern, and southern sides, the site commands reasonably open views across the surrounding countryside, a siting that would have made practical sense to whoever chose this low prominence as a place to settle.