Ringfort, Kilgar, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
On a gentle rise in County Westmeath, a ringfort announces itself not through any visible earthwork but through a faint change in the colour and texture of growing crops.
The structure has been levelled, most likely by centuries of agricultural activity, yet it persists as a cropmark, the kind of ghostly outline that only becomes legible from the air. A Digital Globe aerial photograph taken in November 2011 captured it clearly enough: an oval shape roughly 36 metres north to south and 25 metres east to west, defined at ground level by a band of denser vegetation about four metres wide. Scattered burnt stones in the surrounding plough-soil hint at domestic or ritual activity within the enclosure, though exactly what kind remains open to interpretation.
Ringforts are among the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland, earthen or stone enclosures typically dating from the early medieval period, between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, and generally associated with farmsteads or small defended settlements. This particular example in Kilgar was already old enough to be recorded on the 1837 Ordnance Survey Fair Plan map, where it appears as a distinct oval enclosure. Its position on a slight elevated rise, with good sightlines in all directions, is typical of the way such sites were placed in the landscape, commanding a view of the surrounding ground without requiring a dramatically prominent hilltop. A second ringfort survives some 270 metres to the northwest, suggesting the area was once more densely settled than its quiet, rolling appearance today might suggest.
