Ringfort (Rath), Cartronkeel, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Cartronkeel, Co. Westmeath

Most ringforts in Ireland are defined by a single enclosing bank and ditch, but the one at Cartronkeel, Co. Westmeath, went to the trouble of doubling up.

It is a bivallate ringfort, meaning it has two concentric banks separated by a fosse, which is the term for the ditch dug to create the bank material, with an additional outer fosse beyond. That extra circuit of earthwork was not mere show. It would have made the interior considerably harder to breach, suggesting that whoever built and used this enclosure, probably during the early medieval period, had good reason to invest in the additional effort.

Surveyed in both 1971 and 1978, the fort is roughly circular, with an interior diameter of around 36 metres, and it sits in low-lying level pasture with open views in every direction. The inner bank has been worn down considerably over the centuries and in places has been almost entirely reduced to a scarp, a low slope rather than a proper raised bank. At the west-northwest, there is a slight defacement of the bank that lines up with what appears to be a causeway across the inner fosse, and this alignment is thought to represent the original entrance to the enclosure. A somewhat similar gap on the south-east side is considered the result of later disturbance rather than design. The intervening fosse between the two banks survives in a U-shaped profile, and the outer bank and its fosse remain visible along the southern, western, northern, and eastern arc of the monument. A field fence, clearly of post-1700 construction, runs just outside the inner bank along the north and north-west, a reminder that working farmland has overlapped with this site for centuries without entirely erasing it.

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