Ringfort (Rath), Knockbody, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
In the conifer plantation at Knockbody, Co. Westmeath, a modest circular earthwork sits quietly engulfed by modern forestry, its outline blurred by decades of planting and regrowth.
The site is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common class of monument in the Irish countryside. Ringforts are roughly circular enclosures, typically dating from the early medieval period, that once served as farmsteads and defended homesteads for local farming families. This one is easy to overlook, and that is partly what makes it interesting.
The enclosure is sub-circular in plan, measuring approximately 28 metres across on its north-south axis. It is defined by a low bank of earth and stone, reaching no more than a metre in height at its tallest, with a shallow external fosse, essentially a ditch running just outside the bank. An entrance gap roughly 3.3 metres wide opens to the south-east, the most common orientation for ringfort entrances, likely chosen to face the morning sun and away from prevailing winds. The interior is not level; the ground slopes sharply from north-east to south-west, a detail that gives some sense of how the original occupants would have experienced the space. Old field banks running in the same north-east to south-west direction cut across the monument at its northern and southern edges, suggesting that agricultural reorganisation in later centuries left its mark on the site without entirely erasing it. Another earthwork lies around 120 metres to the west, and Lough Derravarragh, the long lake associated in medieval legend with the Children of Lir, sits less than 500 metres to the east.