Ringfort (Rath), Irishtown, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Irishtown, Co. Westmeath

On the south-western slope of a prominent hill in County Westmeath, an ancient ringfort quietly doubled as a piece of garden design.

The earthwork, oval in plan and roughly 48 metres by 45 metres, was absorbed after 1700 into the ornamental demesne of Irishtown House, which lies some 360 metres to the north-north-west. Rather than being cleared away or built over, it was repurposed as a tree-ring, its enclosing bank planted up to form a decorative circle of trees that would have read pleasingly from the house and its grounds. The 1837 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map records it in exactly this form, an oval enclosure already wearing its arboreal disguise.

Ringforts, also known as raths, are the most numerous monument type in the Irish landscape. Typically dating from the early medieval period, they served as enclosed farmsteads, their earthen or stone banks defining a domestic space rather than a military one. This example retains the low, eroded remains of an earth-and-stone bank, now reduced largely to a scarp, with the best-preserved section surviving on the western side. Stone facing on the outer face from west through south to south-east is thought to reflect the post-1700 landscaping intervention rather than original construction. A shallow, narrow external fosse, the term for a defensive ditch outside a bank, remains faintly traceable on the southern and western arc. Inside the enclosure, which slopes gently southward, a broad low earthen bank positioned off-centre to the north-east may mark the site of a rectangular hut, pointing to domestic occupation long before the demesne designers arrived.

The scarp is low and barely legible when approached from the north-west or south-east, but becomes somewhat clearer on the south and east sides, where the profile remains relatively sharp. The trees that now occupy the interior and line the bank are the most immediately visible feature, the living remnant of a landscaping decision made more than three centuries ago that has, in its own way, preserved the outline of something far older.

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