Holy well, Mainstown, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Holy Sites & Wells

Holy well, Mainstown, Co. Tipperary

The votive offerings left at this well in Mainstown, County Tipperary, were not the usual ribbons or coins.

Pilgrims cut tufts of hair from their own heads and left them at the water's edge. That particular detail, unusual even by the varied customs of Irish holy well devotion, is one of the few things that survives in the record of a site that has otherwise grown quiet.

The well was recorded in 1908 by Power, who gave its name as Tobberessay, derived from Tobar Íosa, meaning Jesus' Well in Irish. At that time it was described as a remarkable well of great size and volume, at which rounds were performed, the term for the traditional circumambulatory prayers walked around a sacred site, often a fixed number of circuits completed barefoot or on the knees. Power noted that votive offerings were made there, with the hair-cutting custom singled out as peculiar even then. The well itself is a substantial circular structure, roughly 2.5 metres across, stone-lined, with dry-stone walling around it reaching about 0.8 metres in height. A single stone step descends to the water in the north-east sector. The site sits about twenty metres north of the Glen River, on the south side of a driveway leading to a two-storey house with older outbuildings nearby. A beech tree on the south side of the well leans noticeably southward, and a wooden frame with a metal grid now covers the opening. There is still water in the well, sitting above a layer of silt, though the concrete that has been applied to the rim on the north and east sides gives the structure a patched, slightly provisional look. No devotions are practised here any more, and no religious objects remain at the site.

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