Ringfort (Rath), Rath, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
A townland in County Westmeath carries the name Rath, and within it sits the very thing that name describes: a rath, or ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that was the standard unit of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland.
The coincidence of place-name and monument is quietly satisfying, as though the landscape has been quietly annotating itself for over a thousand years.
The site occupies a slight rise amid wet, marshy ground, with a stream running approximately fifty metres to the north and marking the boundary between the townland of Rath and its neighbour, Coolvin. That choice of location, a modest elevation above damp land, is characteristic of ringfort builders, who favoured ground that offered both drainage and a degree of natural visibility. The enclosure is sub-circular in plan, measuring roughly twenty-seven metres north to south and thirty metres east to west, and was originally defined by two earthen banks with a fosse, or ditch, running between them. A fosse of this kind would have served both as a drainage feature and as a modest obstacle, reinforcing the social as much as the defensive function of such enclosures. Time and agricultural activity have not been kind to the details: the inner bank survives only in fragments, the wide fosse has been largely infilled along its southern and western sides, and the outer bank has all but disappeared except for a low remnant visible to the north.