Ringfort (Rath), Cloghbane, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
In the townland of Cloghbane in County Westmeath, there is a roughly circular enclosure that does not appear on any edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, the standard historical record against which Irish field monuments have been traced and cross-referenced for well over a century.
Its existence came to light not through excavation or archival research, but through aerial photography, spotted on a Bing Maps image and communicated informally. That is an unusual origin for any entry in the archaeological record.
The enclosure is thought to be a possible ringfort, known in Irish as a rath, a type of enclosed farmstead typically built during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Ringforts are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, with tens of thousands recorded across the country, yet new candidates continue to surface as aerial and satellite imagery improves. The fact that this one left no discernible trace on nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey mapping suggests either significant levelling of the earthworks over time, or that it was already sufficiently reduced by the time those surveys were conducted to escape the attention of the mapmakers. Whether the circular feature visible from the air represents a surviving earthwork, a cropmark, or a soilmark is not clear from what is currently known.