Ringfort (Rath), Martinstown, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
On a high hill outside Martinstown in County Westmeath, there is a ringfort that is easier to understand as an absence than a presence.
Ringforts, also called raths, were circular or near-circular enclosures defined by earthen banks and ditches, used as farmsteads across Ireland roughly from the early medieval period onward. This one survives only as a rough semicircle, its eastern half either levelled long ago or so thoroughly absorbed by the surrounding farmland that even aerial photography taken in November 2011 could detect no trace of the missing portion, not even a cropmark, the faint discolouration in growing vegetation that sometimes betrays buried earthworks from above.
What does survive sits on a northwest-facing slope with wide views in almost every direction, the southeast being the one blind spot. The remaining arc of earthen bank runs from roughly southwest around through west to north, measuring about two metres wide and rising less than a metre in height on either face. Outside it runs a shallow fosse, the term for the ditch that typically accompanied such a bank, here only about thirty centimetres deep. The interior spans roughly thirty metres across. Two field boundaries have cut through the monument at different angles, one bisecting it from northwest to southeast, another crossing the southern perimeter from east to west, and it is these divisions, as much as any deliberate demolition, that account for much of the damage. Inside the surviving earthwork, faint traces of cultivation ridges cross the ground, suggesting the enclosed area was at some point turned over to tillage, which would have further obscured or destroyed whatever features once lay within.