Ringfort (Rath), Irishtown, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
What looks at first like an ordinary field boundary in County Westmeath's gently rolling pasture is, on closer inspection, the eroded outline of an early medieval ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that once dotted the Irish countryside in its thousands.
A ringfort, or rath, typically consisted of a roughly circular area defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, sheltering a household and its livestock. This particular example sits on a slight rise near Irishtown, with open views to the north-northwest, though higher ground closes in from the east, south, and west.
The site has a notably complicated shape. The earliest Ordnance Survey six-inch maps showed it as a D-shaped enclosure, its western edge cut through by an old laneway running roughly north to south. By the revised 1913 twenty-five-inch edition, that same western margin was being marked as a field boundary, suggesting the old lane had already been absorbed into the agricultural landscape. When surveyors examined the monument on the ground in 1972, they found a much-disturbed, roughly circular enclosure measuring approximately 26.8 metres north-northwest to south-southeast and 24.4 metres west-southwest to east-northeast. The original layout, an inner earthen bank, an intervening fosse or ditch, and an outer bank, was still partly legible, but sections had been removed or replaced by modern field banks. No clear entrance feature survived. More intriguing is the curvilinear bank visible within the interior, running from the southwest around to the north-northeast and rejoining the inner bank at both ends. This internal feature may represent an earlier phase of activity or a subdivided enclosure. The western quadrant also retains traces of a hut site, the footprint of a small structure that once stood within the enclosed space.