Ringfort (Rath), Reynella, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ringforts
On a low hillock in County Westmeath, just inside the townland of Reynella, a circular earthwork sits quietly at the meeting point of three parish boundaries.
It is the kind of place that rewards a second glance: a raised platform of ground, roughly 27 metres across, ringed by an earthen bank no more than a metre high and a shallow external fosse, the term for the ditch that typically accompanies such enclosures. Modest in scale, it is nonetheless a recognisable example of a rath, the common Irish ringfort form that served as a farmstead enclosure during the early medieval period, broadly from the fifth to the twelfth centuries.
The site occupies a deliberate position. It was set on the crest of a hillock, with open views in most directions, though higher ground to the south-west provides some natural cover from that quarter. The townland boundary with Battstown runs just thirty metres to the north, and the boundary with Williamstown lies thirty metres to the south, which places the fort in a tight corridor of ground that has probably been farmed and subdivided for well over a thousand years. The near-circular shape of the enclosure, measuring approximately 27 metres north-west to south-east and 25 metres north-east to south-west, is consistent with the domestic ringforts found throughout the Irish midlands, where a single farming family would have lived within the bank and used the fosse and earthwork as much for defining territory and status as for any serious defensive purpose.