Ringfort (Rath), Galmoylestown, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Galmoylestown, Co. Westmeath

On a low ridge in County Westmeath, a roughly circular earthwork sits quietly in grazed grassland, its bank worn down by centuries of weather and agricultural use.

What makes this particular rath, or ringfort, worth pausing over is not any dramatic survival but the way the surrounding landscape, once you know how to read it, refuses to stay still. A ringfort is an enclosed farmstead, typically dating from the early medieval period, defined by one or more earthen banks and an outer fosse, the ditch dug to create the bank material. Here the fosse survives in reasonable definition on most sides, though it has been partially infilled to the south-west where a later field fence cuts across it. A possible causewayed entrance, just over two metres wide, opens at the south-south-east, a gap left in the bank and fosse to allow passage in and out.

The ringfort measures approximately 28 metres in diameter on its north-west to south-east axis, and the interior tilts gently to the west-south-west. Within that sloping ground, traces of cultivation ridges are still detectable, running roughly east-north-east to west-south-west, suggesting the enclosed area was at some point worked as garden or tillage ground rather than left as a yard or pen. A second ringfort lies only 40 metres to the north-west, and a small lake sits 60 metres to the north-east, a cluster of features that suggests this corner of Westmeath was once rather more densely settled than it appears today. Aerial photographs taken by Cambridge University in 1968 and 1970 captured linear earthworks in the field to the south-east, and these appear to correspond to field boundaries associated with two buildings shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1837. A possible sunken road, a hollowed track worn down below the surrounding field level through generations of use, is also visible to the north-west on more recent aerial imagery.

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