Ringfort (Rath), Stonestown, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Stonestown, Co. Westmeath

What looks at first glance like a slightly uneven field in County Westmeath turns out, on closer inspection, to be a carefully layered piece of early medieval engineering.

The ringfort at Stonestown sits on a low rise in undulating grassland, commanding good views in every direction, and its circular form, roughly 34 metres across from north to south and 32 metres from east to west, is still legible despite centuries of agricultural attrition. Two earthen banks once enclosed the site, separated by a wide intervening space of around 12 metres, with a shallow flat-bottomed fosse, or defensive ditch, running along the outside. Ringforts of this kind, known in Irish as raths, were the typical farmstead enclosures of early medieval Ireland, built to protect livestock and household from both animal predators and human raiding parties.

The site has not worn entirely well. The inner bank has been almost completely levelled, and the outer bank survives only along its north-eastern to south-western arc. A field boundary cuts across the outer bank at the north, and a road now runs along the eastern side of the monument, following the line of the old fosse so closely that the original defensive feature has effectively been absorbed into the modern landscape. The entrance arrangement, however, retains some clarity: a gap 1.8 metres wide passes through the inner bank, and a slightly wider gap of 2.5 metres opens through the outer bank at the south-south-west, flanked on either side by two low parallel banks that would once have helped funnel and control movement in and out of the enclosure. At the centre of the interior, the ground sloping gently from north-west to south-east, a rectangular house site is still visible as a faint surface feature, a ghost of the domestic structure that once occupied the heart of this small defended settlement.

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