Fort, Rathbane, Co. Meath

The monument belongs to a class commonly called a ringfort, or rath, a type of enclosed settlement found in great numbers across Ireland, typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. What is notable here is how much of the original structure survives in readable form, layer by layer, each element doing a specific defensive or enclosing job.

The raised interior platform measures roughly thirty metres across and is now planted with deciduous trees, giving it the slightly ceremonial look that tree-ringed earthworks often acquire over time. Around it runs an earthen bank with a base width of between five and seven and a half metres, and an external height of around two metres. Beyond that bank lies a fosse, the term for the ditch that in earthwork architecture is typically dug to provide material for the bank above it, and which also served as an obstacle in its own right. Here the fosse is six and a half to seven metres wide at the top and deepens from roughly eighty centimetres at the south to one and a half metres at the north. Outside the fosse a further, lower outer bank completes the concentric arrangement. The whole enclosure sits within a square field defined by its own earthen banks, the southern side of which reaches an external height of nearly two metres. Entry into the monument was from the east, where a causeway just over four metres wide and half a metre high bridges the fosse, flanked by gaps through both the inner and outer banks.