Ringfort (Rath), Dalystown, Co. Westmeath

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Dalystown, Co. Westmeath

A low earthen bank, a shallow ditch, and a causewayed gap facing east-south-east: the rath at Dalystown in County Westmeath has been quietly absorbing the landscape around it for well over a millennium, even as the landscape has pushed back.

A rath, broadly speaking, is a type of ringfort, a circular or near-circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, most commonly associated with early medieval settlement and farming in Ireland. This one sits on a gentle east-facing slope in pasture, with open views to the north and north-east, the kind of position that suggests its original occupants were at least partly interested in what was coming.

By the time cartographers recorded it on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1837, the enclosure measured roughly 31 metres north to south and 27 metres east to west, with the townland boundary running immediately to its south. Seventy-six years later, the revised 1913 twenty-five-inch map showed it slightly altered, its northern edge truncated by a field boundary that had been driven across the north-west quadrant sometime after 1837. A field survey in 1971 captured it in more detail: the earthen bank, eroded and reduced to a scarp in places, still enclosed a roughly circular interior; a wide shallow fosse, the ditch that once defined the outer edge of the enclosure, remained visible along the north-east, east, and southern arcs. The entrance survives as a causewayed passage on the east-south-east side, with gaps in both the inner bank and a slight outer counterscarp, and a low causeway between them just ten centimetres above the surrounding ground. Sections of the bank along the north and north-west had been straightened slightly, absorbed into the later field system. A modern lean-to hut occupied the south-west quadrant at the time, and the ground just outside the scarp had been quarried away at some point, further complicating the monument's edges.

From aerial photography the site is still legible as a roughly oval tree-lined enclosure, its outline held together more by vegetation now than by the earthworks beneath.

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