Ringfort, Newtown, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

Ringforts

Ringfort, Newtown, Co. Westmeath

On a steep-sided oval hill rising out of low-lying, waterlogged grassland in County Westmeath, there survives almost nothing of what was once a ringfort, the circular earthen enclosures that functioned as farmsteads and defensible homesteads throughout early medieval Ireland.

Almost nothing, but not quite. A single short segment of scarp, averaging around 2.1 metres in height, clings to the west-north-west edge of the hilltop. Everything else has been quarried away.

The 1837 Ordnance Survey Fair Plan map shows the site clearly enough: a circular enclosure marked and annotated simply as "fort". That label, and the shape on the map, are now the most complete record of what the monument once looked like. By the time surveyors examined the hill in detail, the site had been almost entirely levelled. The hilltop and its flanks are pitted with quarry holes and animal burrows, the ground disturbed and irregular where the earthworks once ran. The hill itself still commands good views to the south, west, and north, which may well have been part of its original appeal to whoever chose to build there, probably well over a thousand years ago.

What makes this site quietly striking is the gap between the 1837 map and the present ground. A monument substantial enough to be clearly depicted and named on a nineteenth-century survey has since been reduced to a single earthen ledge and a field of holes. The scarp that remains is easy to miss, and the surrounding landscape gives little indication that anything of significance ever occupied the summit.

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Pete F
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