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County Cork · Munster

Charleville

Ráth Luirc or An Ráth

named in 1661 for Charles II; the older name Rathgoggan meant Cogan's ringfort, and the Irish names mean the rath (An Ráth) and Lorc's rath (Ráth Luirc), the latter a doubtful 19th-century attachment

👥 3,970 (census 2022) 🏔 County Cork Source: Wikipedia ↗
The story

A north Cork town in the Golden Vale, founded in 1661 by Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, who named it for Charles II to prove his loyalty after backing Cromwell. Its name has been fought over: officially Rathluirc from 1920, it voted in 1989 by over 68% to be Charleville again. Kerry Foods makes Cheestrings here, and the poet Seán Clárach Mac Domhnaill, Chief Poet of Munster, lies in Holy Cross graveyard.

County Cork through the ages →
The history of Charleville

The old name was Rathcogan, after the family of Miles de Cogan, granted land here after the Norman invasion. Richard Boyle bought the lands of Broghill and Rathgogan in the Plantation of Munster, and his son Roger founded the town in 1661. Under the Penal Laws the parish was joined with Bruree and Colmanswell, and in 1704 Fr Daniel Mac Namara was registered as priest for the whole area. The old chapel in Holy Cross cemetery was abandoned and its ruin now stands among the graves. William Alcock Tully, who grew up here, later named Charleville in Queensland after the town.

After the 1920 local elections Sinn Féin councils replaced names with royal links, and the town became Rathluirc on the advice of Risteárd Ó Foghladha. The Placenames Commission later found that local Irish speakers had called it An Ráth, which became its legal Irish name in 1975. A plebiscite in December 1989 settled on Charleville. When Golden Vale Engineering closed in 1983, several engineering firms spun off from it.

Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Charleville ↗, rewritten here and adding nothing it does not say; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Castles and monuments within 15 km

Straight-line distances from the town centre, from each site's documented coordinates.

Worth seeing nearby
  • Grange stone circle, Lough Gur · Ireland's largest stone circle, 113 stones in a great embanked ring, beside a lake that has yielded more prehistoric finds than almost anywhere in Ireland.
  • Lough Gur — Áine's lake · The goddess Áine of Knockainey haunts its shores, and Gearóid Iarla, the earl said to be her son, sleeps in a cave here and rides out around the lake on a silver-shod white horse.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.

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