Ringfort (Rath), Creggstown, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
On a low rise in the rolling pasture of County Westmeath, a double-banked earthwork sits quietly in the landscape, its outline softened by trees and centuries of agricultural life pressing in around it.
What makes this particular rath, or ringfort, slightly unusual is not its age but its form: two concentric banks enclosing an oval space, with a notably wide gap between them. Most ringforts, which were typically enclosed farmsteads of the early medieval period, feature a single bank and ditch arrangement. The double-bank configuration here suggests something more elaborate, though what that elaboration meant in practice remains unresolved.
The monument measures roughly 42 metres along its northwest to southeast axis and 34 metres across the northeast to southwest, dimensions recorded on the revised Ordnance Survey 25-inch map of 1913. The site was already being marked as a feature of note well before that, annotated simply as "Fort" on the 1837 OS Fair Plan map. By 1970, when the monument was formally described, the two banks were recorded as best preserved along the southern and western arc, from east-southeast around to west-northwest, while quarrying had disturbed sections elsewhere. The northern portion has fared worse still; a road running roughly east to west has cut through the NNE quadrant, removing that segment of the earthwork entirely and obscuring what may once have been the original entrance.