Ringfort (Rath), Lisnascreen, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Lisnascreen, Co. Westmeath

On a hilltop in County Westmeath, a roughly oval earthwork sits in open pasture, its two concentric banks barely distinguishable now from the ground around them.

This is a bivallate ringfort, meaning it was defended by two rings of earthen and stone banks rather than the single ring more commonly encountered across Ireland. Ringforts were the enclosed farmsteads of Early Medieval Ireland, typically home to a single family and their livestock, and the double-bank arrangement here would once have signalled a degree of status or a need for additional security. What survives today is considerably reduced, but the site retains enough to read its original shape.

When the site was described in 1978, the inner bank was already low, worn in most places to little more than a scarp, though it remained noticeably high and steep at the south-east and north-west. A wide, shallow fosse, the ditch between the two banks, separated this from the outer bank, which had suffered more badly; it had been disturbed at several points and was almost entirely levelled along the eastern and south-eastern arc. An entrance feature was recorded at the north-north-east. The interior carries old cultivation ridges running east to west, evidence that the enclosed ground was turned over to tillage at some point after the fort was abandoned. A depression near the eastern bank most likely marks the site of old quarrying, which would explain some of the damage to that section of the outer bank. Together, these details tell a quiet story of centuries of agricultural reuse layered over the original structure.

The hilltop position remains the most immediately striking thing about the place. The wide views in all directions were almost certainly deliberate, a feature as practical as it was imposing for whoever once lived within those banks.

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Pete F
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