Just outside the village is a steeply inclined field, which in 1923 was part of Baranarigh Wood, where five soldiers of the Irish Free State National Army were killed by a booby trap mine on 6 March of that year during the Irish Civil War. The men killed at Knocknagoshel included three officers and two privates, one of whom was a local man. Lieutenant Pat O’Connor was targeted by the Anti-Treaty IRA because of his knowledge of the local IRA organisation and the men involved in it and because of the manner in which he had pursued the anti-treaty guerrillas. The soldiers were lured into the trap by false information about a Republican dugout in the area. The atrocity was responded to by a series of reprisals against the anti-treaty side. This included the torture of local men by Free State troops who were then tied to mines in Ballyseedy, killing them when the mine exploded. Altogether, Free State troops killed or executed 19 Republican prisoners in Kerry over the next two weeks.