Ringfort (Rath), Corr, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
On a low but commanding rise in the rolling pastures of County Westmeath, a ringfort sits quietly diminished, its outline legible but significantly worn down from what it once was.
Ringforts, sometimes called raths, were enclosed farmsteads built predominantly during the early medieval period in Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and they survive in their thousands across the Irish landscape. This one at Corr has endured, but not without loss.
The Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1837 records it as a roughly circular earthwork measuring approximately 51 metres east to west and 48 metres north to south. By the time the revised 25-inch map was produced in 1913, those dimensions had contracted to around 37 metres by 35 metres, suggesting the monument had been cut back considerably in the intervening decades, most likely through agricultural pressure on its edges. A field description from 1971 adds useful texture: the western side retains a low earth and stone bank, while elsewhere the boundary takes the form of a steep scarp, the kind of sharp drop that would have made the enclosure feel more defensible from outside. Between the interior platform and the outer ground runs a fosse, a defensive ditch, which takes a U-shaped course visible from the south-east around to the north-west. There are also traces of what may be a counterscarp at the south-west, a secondary bank on the far side of the ditch that would have reinforced the enclosure further. At the eastern side, a gap approximately 3.7 metres wide at the top and 2.75 metres at its base is likely the original entrance. Inside, the ground rises gently towards the centre, and a complex of internal banks includes what has been identified as a probable house site at the heart of the enclosure, a reminder that someone actually lived here.
Aerial photography shows the site today as a partially tree-lined earthwork, its circular form still readable from above even if much altered at ground level. The trees, the reduced dimensions, and the disturbed ground around the outer edge all speak to centuries of gradual encroachment, though the essential structure, bank, fosse, raised interior, and probable entrance, remains discernible for anyone who knows what to look for.