Hut site, Rathcreevagh, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Settlement Sites
Within a ringfort in Rathcreevagh, County Westmeath, the grass-covered wall footings of a sub-circular house sit quietly at the centre of the enclosure, easy to overlook and easy to underestimate.
A ringfort is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and ditch, built predominantly during the early medieval period and used as a farmstead or family settlement. That a house once stood inside one is not unusual in itself, but what makes this particular site worth pausing over is how legible it remains, however faintly, after so many centuries of pasture and weather.
The footings describe a sub-circular plan measuring 7.6 metres on a north-northeast to south-southwest axis, sitting on a slight natural rise within gently undulating farmland. The ground to the south-west is poorly drained, the kind of wet, heavy soil that shaped where early communities chose to settle and how. A second ringfort stands roughly 130 metres to the north, suggesting this part of Rathcreevagh once supported a cluster of early medieval activity rather than a single isolated holding. The house site has not survived intact. At its south-west and west-northwest edges it has been partially quarried away, leaving the footings incomplete and the interior disturbed, which makes what does remain all the more fragile.