Hugh de Lacy, 1180s, on an older ringfort
The motte of Ráth Tó
The flat-topped mound in the centre of Ratoath is the reason the town has its name - Ráth Tó, the ringfort of Tó. Hugh de Lacy, one of the most powerful Norman lords in Ireland, raised the motte and bailey here in the 1180s and kept Ratoath as his personal manor after Henry II granted him most of Meath. The mound stands about 11 metres high and 52 metres across at the base, with the line of a defensive ditch still readable on the north and east sides. After de Lacy's death the manor passed to his son Hugh, first Earl of Ulster; it was forfeited in 1210 and returned to Walter de Lacy five years later. A medieval church once stood on the same ground and was a ruin by the 1690s.
Begun c. 1820, rebuilt 1874
Holy Trinity Church on the mound
Holy Trinity Church sits directly on the motte-and-bailey site in the middle of the village, which is unusual - most churches give the earthwork a wide berth. It was begun around 1820 by Rev. Richard Carolan and substantially rebuilt in the late 1860s and 1870s, finished about 1874. The result is a five-bay nave with an ashlar limestone entrance gable, a bellcote, buttresses, pointed traceried windows and chancel mosaics. The graveyard around it carries the older church site. It is a regionally rated building, and the easiest way to read the layered history of the town - stand in the churchyard and you are on the Norman mound.
Easter Monday since 1870
Fairyhouse and the Irish Grand National
Fairyhouse Racecourse sits in Ratoath parish on the R155, three kilometres off the N3. The first meeting was an 1848 point-to-point run by the Ward Union hunt, and the course has staged the Irish Grand National every Easter Monday since 1870, when the first running was won by a horse called Sir Robert Peel. The track is a right-handed circuit of about one mile and 6.5 furlongs, with a 2.5-furlong run-in and a slight uphill finish. The National itself is a handicap chase of three miles and five furlongs over 24 fences, limited to thirty runners aged five and up. It is the centrepiece of the busiest jumps day in the Irish racing year, and the one weekend Ratoath is genuinely full.
Meath senior football, 2019 / 2020 / 2022
Ratoath GAA
For a town that was a village inside living memory, Ratoath GAA punches hard. The club fields around fifty teams and won the Meath Senior Football Championship three times in four years - 2019, 2020 and 2022 - which is the kind of run that reorders a county. On a championship Sunday the club is the centre of the town in a way the main street is not. If you want the version of Ratoath that is more than a commuter dormitory, it is at the GAA grounds.