Ringfort (Rath), Loughanstown, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
On a natural hillock in the grasslands of Loughanstown, County Westmeath, a broad circular earthwork sits just below the summit, quietly overlooking the countryside to the south and south-west.
What makes this place quietly unusual is not any dramatic preservation but the density of medieval activity it hints at: within 500 metres of this single enclosure sit the remains of a moated site to the north-east and an unclassified castle to the south-east, suggesting that this gentle corner of Westmeath was once a good deal busier than the present farmland implies.
The earthwork is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument in Ireland. Typically dating from roughly the sixth to the twelfth centuries, raths were circular enclosures defined by one or more earthen banks and external ditches, used as farmsteads by families of middling social rank. This example is substantial, measuring approximately 43 metres north to south and 40 metres east to west, making it a fairly large specimen of the type. The enclosing bank and its external fosse, a shallow defensive ditch, survive in varying condition: best preserved along the northern to east-south-eastern arc, elsewhere reduced to a low scarp where centuries of farming have worn the earthwork down. The fosse itself has been modified along part of its circuit, where it was adapted to serve as a field boundary, steepening its profile in the process. At the south-east there is a possible original entrance gap, roughly 1.9 metres wide, with a short causeway of about 2.1 metres width crossing the fosse, though this causeway appears to have been reworked at some point in the recent past. The interior of the enclosure slopes from north-north-west down to south-south-east, following the natural lie of the hillside beneath it.