Ringfort (Rath), Clondalever, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
What remains of this early medieval enclosure in County Westmeath is, by most measures, almost nothing.
A slight scarp, roughly circular, measuring around 21 metres across one axis and 24 metres across another, traces the outer edge of what was once a rath, a type of earthen ringfort typically used as a farmstead or family enclosure during the early medieval period in Ireland. The ground around it rolls gently in undulating grassland on a west-north-west facing slope, and there is nothing to announce that anything of historical significance ever stood here.
The 1837 Ordnance Survey Fair Plan map recorded the site clearly enough, marking a small oval earthwork and annotating it simply as "fort". That document gives us a useful fixed point: the enclosure was still sufficiently intact in the 1830s to be mapped and identified. At some point after that, the site was substantially levelled, most likely through agricultural improvement, leaving only the faint scarp that can be detected today. A possible hilltop enclosure lies approximately 130 metres to the south-west, which raises the question of whether this part of Clondalever once held a cluster of related features, though the relationship between the two sites remains unclear.