Ringfort (Rath), Rath, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
The townland of Rath in County Westmeath takes its name from the Irish word for a ringfort, which makes it quietly apt that the ground here still holds the faint outline of one, even if you would struggle to recognise it as such standing in the field.
What survives is barely there at all: a sub-circular enclosure roughly 48 metres across, defined by an earthen bank that has been worn almost flat and a fosse, the encircling ditch that once accompanied it, now so shallow at around 0.3 metres deep and so wide at 8 metres across that it reads more as a soft depression in the pasture than any kind of deliberate earthwork. On the north-western side even that much has gone, the fosse filled in entirely.
Ringforts, known in Irish as raths or lios depending on regional usage, were the typical enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, generally dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. They ranged from modest single-banked enclosures to more elaborate multivallate examples associated with higher-status occupants. This one sits on the south-eastern face of a low ridge in gently undulating pasture, with the River Riffey running some 85 metres to the south-west and south, where it marks the townland boundary with Loughanstown in Moygoish barony. A second ringfort lies approximately 180 metres to the north, which is not unusual; paired or clustered ringforts occur across the Irish midlands, sometimes reflecting family groupings or sequential occupation of the same good agricultural ground. Inside the enclosure, the land slopes slightly from north-west to south-east, and there are vague traces of cultivation ridges running roughly east-north-east to west-south-west, suggesting the interior was put to agricultural use at some point, possibly long after the original structure had lost its meaning as a boundary. A levelled field boundary intersecting the site from the north has further confused the archaeology at ground level, though the monument's outline remained clearly legible on aerial photography taken in November 2011.