Ranaghan

Ranaghan is a townland and archaeological site in County Westmeath, Ireland.

Ranaghan

Ranaghan
Town
Hills of Ranaghan
Ranaghan
Location in Ireland
Coordinates: 53°38′50″N 7°13′48″W
CountryIreland
ProvinceLeinster
CountyCounty Westmeath
Elevation
128 m (420 ft)
 merged with Castlepollard
Time zoneUTC+0 (WET)
 • Summer (DST)UTC-1 (IST (WEST))
Irish Grid ReferenceN463640

Introduction

It is south-west of Lough Lene on high ground where there are a multitude of ringforts. Randoon (Randún), possibly the most famous fort of the area, is between Castlepollard and Collinstown. Turgesius the Viking is believed to have governed and sojourned in this area.

Origins

Ringforts are fortified settlements, generally agreed to be from the Early Medieval Period in Northern Europe, especially Ireland. They are also known as ráth (as in Ranaghan) caiseal, cathair and dún (as in Randoon/Randún) in the early Irish sources. A ráth (anglicised rath) was made of earth; caiseal (northwestern Ireland, anglicised cashel) and cathair (southwestern Ireland) were built of stone. A dún is a more prestigious site, the seat of a local chieftain or ruler; the term is also applied to promontory forts.

Locations

No historical or archaeological maps, surveys, nor records of the Early Medieval Period in Ireland approach the dates of the Irish ringforts. The areas surrounding Lough Lene (meaning "fertile soil") of Collinstown, Glenidan, Comerstown, Ranaghan, are dotted with ringforts, testifying to the land of fertile soil.

  • Gillardstown: view to Ranagahan Hills
  • Overgrown ringforts, Ranaghan Hills
  • Gillardstown and Ranagahan Hills
gollark: I don't think you can just point at that as a final answer. What is that graph even showing growth in? Why is competition not creating an incentive to get rid of useless administrators? *Is* there even much competition?
gollark: I think the point is more that it's a system which mostly works well and has produced lots of nice things.
gollark: At some point you'll have to make tradeoffs, because going for "maximize lives saved right now at all costs" is a really terrible strategy.
gollark: Strategies which minimize COVID deaths in the short run wouldn't be very good if they totally collapsed the economy after a while. Especially since this is likely to stick around for a while.
gollark: The economy *does matter*, though, even in a "lives saved" sense. As someone on the interweb put it:> Damage to productivity eventually results in damage to people, since we use part of our productivity to preserve life.

See also

Further reading
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.