Ringfort (Rath), Curraghmore, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
What survives at Curraghmore in County Westmeath is not so much a ringfort as the memory of one.
A roughly circular enclosure, originally around 28 metres across, has been largely levelled over time, leaving only a curving arc of earthwork to trace what was once a complete perimeter. Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when defined by earthen banks rather than stone, were the dominant form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a farmstead and its associated buildings within a raised bank and external ditch. Here, that bank survives to a height of about 1.8 metres along a sweep from south-southwest to north-northwest, its outer face still noticeably steep. Traces of the fosse, the ditch that would originally have run outside the bank, remain visible along the southern and western arcs.
The monument sits on a slight rise in gently undulating pasture, with a more prominent rise to the north that overlooks it. The 1913 revised edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map already recorded only an arc rather than a complete circuit, suggesting that much of the levelling had occurred before the twentieth century. By 1970, when the site was formally described, the surviving section was understood to be a remnant, with the rest gone. A quarry has since disturbed the western edge of the perimeter further, and a modern footpath runs through the same area. The original entrance, which in an intact rath would typically appear as a gap or causeway in the bank, is no longer recognisable. Aerial photography reveals the earthwork most clearly as a tree-lined arc, the vegetation following the line of the old bank where the ground itself has been worn down or cut away.