Ringfort (Rath), Balrath, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
On a north-northeast facing slope in County Westmeath, a low oval earthwork sits quietly in the hilly grassland, with Lough Owel visible roughly 800 metres to the east.
It is not dramatic to look at, and that is precisely what makes it worth understanding. This is a rath, a type of ringfort that was once the enclosed farmstead of an early medieval Irish family, typically defined by a circular or near-circular earthen bank and a surrounding ditch known as a fosse. Thousands of them survive across Ireland in varying states of repair; this one belongs firmly to the more worn end of that spectrum.
The enclosure is roughly oval, measuring approximately 25 metres north to south and 28.5 metres east to west. Its earthen bank is poorly preserved, and the fosse, the shallow external ditch that once helped define the boundary of the settlement, is only legible along the northern and eastern arc, from north-northwest around through north and east to southeast. A large gap on the southeastern side appears to be the result of later disturbance rather than any original feature, and the interior itself is uneven, scattered with small dumps of soil and stone and pocked with shallow disturbances. None of this is unusual for a site that has been sitting in farmed landscape for over a millennium. About 350 metres to the south-southeast lies a ring-barrow, a low circular burial mound of broadly prehistoric type, suggesting the area carried significance across more than one era. The townland boundary with Mountmurray, marked by a stream or drain, runs just 28 metres to the north.