Ringfort (Rath), Portnashangan, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Portnashangan, Co. Westmeath

On a patch of well-drained grassland near the shore of Lough Owel in County Westmeath, the land rises slightly in a way that most walkers would probably dismiss as a natural undulation.

It is, in fact, the remains of a rath, a type of ringfort that was once a farmstead enclosed by earthen banks, typically dating from the early medieval period in Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries.

The monument takes the form of a raised circular area approximately twenty-seven metres in diameter, oriented northeast to southwest. It was originally enclosed by two earthen banks with a shallow fosse, or ditch, running between them. The outer bank has fared poorly over time and is now visible only at the southern side. A field fence that once curved around the monument's perimeter from southwest, around the north, and back to the northeast appeared to follow the line of that outer bank, effectively borrowing an ancient boundary for a modern agricultural one. By November 2011, even that fence had disappeared from aerial photographs, leaving the site to communicate its history almost entirely through the quiet geometry of the raised ground itself, set a hundred metres or so from the lough's western edge.

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Pete F
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