Ringfort (Rath), Killynan, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
What makes this ringfort quietly unusual is not so much what remains of it as what it was absorbed into.
By 1837, when the Ordnance Survey recorded it on their six-inch map, the earthwork had become a feature of a deer park attached to Killynan House, its ancient banks folded into the managed landscape of a landed estate. A monument that once organised early medieval life around cattle, kinship, and small-scale agriculture had, centuries later, become an ornamental curiosity in somebody's grounds.
The ringfort itself is a roughly circular enclosure, measuring approximately 39 metres on its longer axis and 35 metres on the shorter. A rath, as this type of monument is generally known, consists of one or more earthen banks with an intervening fosse, that is, a ditch dug to provide the material for the bank, and was typically used as a farmstead during the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries. Here, the inner bank survives best along the southern and western arc, while the north-eastern and south-eastern sections have been reduced to little more than a scarp, and the south-east corner is almost entirely levelled. A very shallow fosse and a possible outer bank persist on the south-facing side, though the outer bank is low enough that it may represent nothing older than a later field boundary. The original entrance has not been identified with certainty, though the south-east is considered the likeliest candidate. Inside, the ground slopes gently toward the south-east, with some stones still breaking the surface. Descriptions made in 1970 and 1979 capture a monument already in uneven condition, and this unevenness reflects centuries of agricultural use pressing in on all sides. Notably, the site does not stand alone. Another ringfort lies roughly 40 metres to the west, with an enclosure and a hut site each around 230 metres further in the same direction, suggesting a wider pattern of early settlement across this part of Westmeath.