Ratass Church

Ratass Church
Rathass Church
Teampall Ráth Teas
Ratass Church Ratass Church
Location	Quill Street, Tralee, County Kerry
Country	Ireland
Denomination	Catholic (pre-Reformation)
Architecture
Functional status	ruined
Style	Romanesque
Years built	10th century AD
Specifications
Length	16 m (52 ft)
Width	7.5 m (25 ft)
Number of floors	1
Floor area	120 m2 (1,300 sq ft)
Materials	sandstone, limestone, mortar
Administration
Diocese	Ardfert and Aghadoe
National Monument of Ireland
Official name	Ratass Church & Ogham Stone
Reference no.	57

Ratass Church is a medieval church with ogham stone inscriptions in Tralee, County Kerry, Ireland. It is a National Monument.

Location

The church and adjacent graveyard are located on Quill Street, in the eastern suburbs of Tralee.

History

It is believed that a ringfort or embanked enclosure was built here first (Rath Mhaighe Teas, "fort of the southern plain"). Later, a sandstone church was erected in the 10th century. It served as the episcopal seat of a diocese in Kerry from 1111 to 1117, when the seat was moved to Ardfert. The west gable and part of the nave walls belong to this earlier construction; the rest of the church is later.

Ogham Stone

File:Ogham Stone.jpg

The ogham stone

The Ogham Stone is from much earlier. Based on its Primitive Irish grammar, the inscription is estimated to be from around AD 550–600.

The stone is of fine purple sandstone (145 × 34 × 20 cm), with the inscription [A]NM SILLANN MAQ VATTILLOGG ("name of Sílán son of Fáithloga"). It was discovered in 1975 during a cleanup. The walls of a 19th-century burial vault had been built almost flush with it.