Qualla: Rahinnane Castle

Rahinnane Castle: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The defenders dug a ditch nine metres deep around their ringfort before they had heard of stone castles, before they had heard of England, possibly before they had heard of Christianity. That earthwork was already centuries old when the FitzGeralds, hereditary Knights of Kerry, decided in the 15th or 16th century to build a stone tower house inside it. They simply added a roof of masonry to a defensive site the locals had been using for a thousand years. Rahinnane Castle sits in a green field 1.73 km northwest of Ventry on the Dingle Peninsula, and the dirt around it still shows the shape of what was here first.

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Rahinnane Castle: Finan's Ringfort

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The original site is older than anyone can quite pin down. The Irish name was Rath Fhionnáin — Finan's ringfort — and the earthwork dates to the 7th or 8th century AD, though similar structures across Ireland go back further still. A souterrain (an underground stone passage, used...

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Rahinnane Castle: The Knights of Kerry

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The FitzGeralds came to Ireland with the Normans and stayed. Three branches of the family held hereditary knighthoods: the White Knight, the Knight of Glin, and the Knight of Kerry. The Knights of Kerry built Rahinnane Castle as one of their tower houses — three storeys of rectan...

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Rahinnane Castle: Sir Charles Wilmot Arrives

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Nine Years' War (1593–1603) was the largest Irish rebellion against Elizabethan rule, led by Hugh O'Neill and Hugh Roe O'Donnell. The fighting reached Munster late in the war. In 1602, after the Battle of Kinsale had effectively broken the rebellion, English commander Sir Cha...

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Rahinnane Castle: Cromwell's Quieter Ending

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Fifty years later the castle was finished off. Oliver Cromwell's conquest of Ireland between 1649 and 1653 was an attempt to reduce the country militarily and demographically — a campaign that historians estimate killed somewhere between fifteen and twenty percent of the Irish po...

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