Ringfort (Rath), Portnashangan, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
A low hillock near the eastern shore of Lough Owel in County Westmeath holds the faint but legible outline of an early medieval ringfort, the kind of enclosure that once served as a defended farmstead for a family of some local standing.
What makes this one quietly interesting is the way its past and more recent history have become layered on top of each other, almost inseparably.
The site is roughly circular, measuring approximately 45 metres across its northeast to southwest axis, and is enclosed by an earth and stone bank that has largely been reduced to a low scarp over the centuries. A shallow external fosse, the defensive ditch that would originally have ringed the outside of the bank, survives most clearly on the northern side. No original entrance can be identified; the several gaps now visible in the bank are considered modern breaks rather than ancient thresholds. Sometime after 1700, the outer face of the bank along its southeastern arc was repurposed as a field boundary, folding an Iron Age or early medieval structure quietly into the geometry of post-medieval agricultural life. Inside the enclosure, the ground slopes steeply from north-northwest to south-southeast, and traces of cultivation ridges running east to west are still visible across the interior, suggesting the enclosed space was worked as farmland at some point after the ringfort had ceased to function as a settlement. The hillock itself offers open views to the north, east, and southeast, and the eastern shoreline of Lough Owel lies just 225 metres to the southwest, a reminder that proximity to fresh water was rarely accidental in the siting of early settlements.