Ringfort (Rath), Edmondstown, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
What makes this particular earthwork quietly compelling is not the site itself in isolation but the fact that it is one of three ringforts clustered within roughly 130 metres of one another in the same stretch of Westmeath pasture.
The two nearest neighbours lie to the south-east and north-north-east respectively, close enough that their occupants would have been plainly visible to one another across open ground. Whether that proximity meant kinship, rivalry, or simple agricultural convenience is a question the landscape cannot answer, but the grouping is uncommon enough to stop you thinking of any one of the three as an ordinary find.
A ringfort, sometimes called a rath, is an enclosed farmstead of early medieval Ireland, typically defined by a circular or oval bank and an outer ditch, known as a fosse, that together formed a boundary around a domestic settlement. This example at Edmondstown sits on a slight rise in gently undulating ground, with open views in most directions, though higher ground to the west-north-west limits the outlook that way. It was recorded on the revised 1913 Ordnance Survey 25-inch map as a sub-oval earthwork, and a more detailed description from 1970 gives its dimensions as roughly 44 metres on the longer axis and just under 34 metres on the shorter. The enclosing bank, fosse, and traces of an outer bank are all present, though the inner bank is better preserved on the east and south-east sides, where it retains a steep exterior face, than elsewhere, where it has been reduced or gapped. An original entrance survives at the north-east, marked by a causeway across the fosse, roughly 6.3 metres wide overall, and a corresponding gap through the inner bank. Inside, gentle cultivation ridges running north to south suggest the enclosed ground was worked at some point after the ringfort's primary use had ended.
The monument is still legible from aerial photography as a tree-lined earthwork, though at ground level modern infrastructure has made modest inroads: two electricity poles stand within the fosse on the east side, and a field fence running east to west from the southern exterior partially obscures what remains of the outer bank at that point.