Ringfort (Rath), Loughanstown, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
What gives this Westmeath ringfort its quiet interest is not dramatic scale but concentration.
Within roughly 180 metres of one another, this earthwork, a second ringfort, and an unclassified castle occupy the same gently rolling grassland near Loughanstown, forming an accidental cluster that suggests generations of people returning to broadly the same patch of ground for reasons that are now largely lost to us.
The ringfort itself, known in Irish archaeology as a rath, is a type of enclosed farmstead that was widespread across Ireland during the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries. Typically circular in plan and defined by one or more earthen banks with a ditch between them, raths were the everyday domestic and agricultural units of that long era. This particular example measures approximately 25 metres in diameter on its northwest to southeast axis and sits on a slight natural rise, though surrounding hills limit any sense of commanding prospect. It is enclosed by two earthen banks with an intervening fosse, which is the term for the ditch dug between defensive or boundary banks. The inner bank is poorly preserved, while the fosse itself is narrow and shallow, surviving best on the southwestern arc. The low, broad outer bank remains visible across a wide sweep from south-southwest around through west to north-northeast. At the southern side there is a possible entrance gap roughly 2.9 metres wide, with a causeway crossing the fosse at approximately 2.4 metres wide and 0.3 metres high, the kind of modest, functional threshold that would once have been the main point of access into a working farmstead. The interior slopes slightly southward.
Visitors exploring the area should be aware that the earthworks are subtle rather than imposing, as might be expected from a site where the inner bank has suffered considerable wear. The southwest portion of the fosse offers the clearest sense of the monument's original form, and the outer counterscarp bank is most legible when approached from the western and northern sides.