Rahinnane Castle
| Rahinnane Castle | |
|
County Kerry | |
|---|---|
 Rahinnane Castle | |
| Type: | Tower house and ringfort |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | Q36920166 |
| Location: | 52°8’35"N, 10°22’60"W |
| History | |
| Information | |
Rahinnane Castle is a tower house in County Kerry standing in the middle of an ancient ringfort or 'rath'. The castle is designated as a 'National Monument'.[1]
Location
Rahinnane Castle is to be found one miles north-west of Ventry, in the west of the Dingle Peninsula.[2]
History
The ringfort on the site was built in the 7th or 8th century AD. The Irish name was originally Rath Fhionnáin, meaning 'Finan's ringfort'.
Local tradition once claimed that this piece of land was the last in Ireland held by the Vikings, as it was so easily defended.[3]
The stone tower house was built in the 15th or 16th century by the FitzGeralds, hereditary Knights of Kerry.[4]
In 1602, towards the end of the Nine Years' War, the castle was taken by Sir Charles Wilmot. It was ruined during the Cromwellian conquest (1649–53).[5][6]
Structure
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The earliest feature is the ring-fort, an Iron Age fort site consisting of a ditch 30 feet deep, an entrance in the south-west and a souterrain in the south-east.
Rahinnane Castle was built in the 15th or 16th in the centre of the ringfort. It was rectangular and three storeys tall. Most of the outer walls remain; on the inside there is some mural stairway, traces of vaulting and a blind arcade. Two corner turrets are also visible.
Today it stands in ruin inside the circular earthwork. More than half the outer walls of the three-storey castle remain.[7]
References
- ↑ National Monuments Service: Kerry
- ↑ Irish Castles - Rahinnane Castle
- ↑ 'Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland' 27 June 2018 (via Google Books)
- ↑ Vaughan-Thomas, Wynford; Hales, Michael: 'Secret landscapes: mysterious sites, deserted villages, and forgotten places of Great Britain and Ireland' (Select Editions, 1980) (via Google Books)
- ↑ "Ancient to Mediæval (And Slightly Later) History - Rahinnane Castle, County Kerry, Ireland Rahinnane...". http://archaicwonder.tumblr.com/post/154659763271/rahinnane-castle-county-kerry-ireland-rahinnane.
- ↑ Administrator. "Ventry - Ceann Trá". http://www.dingle-peninsula.ie/ventry.html.
- ↑ Rahinnane Castle: Irish Antiquities
- Rahinnane Castle: castles.ancientireland.org] (Frank Schorr)
- Alcock, Leslie: 'Dinas Powys: An Iron Age, Dark Age, and Mediæval Settlement in Glamorgan' University of Wales Press, 1963) (via Google Books)