Ringfort (Rath), Ballintue, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Ballintue, Co. Westmeath

In the grasslands of County Westmeath, a slight rise in the ground is almost all that remains of what was once a double-banked ringfort, and even that much has nearly vanished.

By November 2011, aerial photography could barely resolve the site at all, reduced by levelling to a faint smudge on the landscape. That near-total erasure makes the earlier description all the more worth attending to, because what was here was not simply a mound of earth but a carefully engineered enclosure with details that speak to real effort and intention.

When the site was recorded in 1972, it measured approximately 28 metres in diameter along a north-northeast to south-southwest axis. It was enclosed by two earthen banks with a fosse, or ditch, running between them, the kind of arrangement typical of a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which would have served as a defended farmstead during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. What set this example apart from a straightforward earthwork was the presence of dry stone walling and upright slabs used as revetment on the internal face of the inner bank, a method of facing an earthen bank with stone to stabilise and reinforce it. That combination of earth and stone construction suggests a site that received some care in its original build. A deep depression south of the interior's centre was interpreted as a possible souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber commonly associated with ringforts and used for storage or refuge. The fosse and outer bank remained legible from the south and west as late as the 1972 survey, and the site sat on a natural rise with open views across the surrounding grassland in most directions, a position that would have made practical sense for anyone keeping watch over livestock or territory.

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Pete F
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