Holy well, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Holy Sites & Wells
Beneath a layer of tarmacadam on the outskirts of Mullingar lies a holy well that was once significant enough to carry a name, the Priest's Well, and has since been so thoroughly erased that its exact location is now largely a matter of inference.
By 1983, the well had been covered over entirely, the ground sealed with asphalt, and a swimming pool constructed to the south of where it once stood. The contrast is quietly arresting: a site associated with the older, devotional geography of the Irish landscape, replaced by the thoroughly modern business of recreational swimming.
The well's documentary history is thin but telling. It does not appear on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1837, which suggests it was either overlooked by the original surveyors or not yet considered a feature worth recording. By the 1910 edition of the OS twenty-five-inch map, however, it is marked clearly as the Priest's Well, indicating that at some point in the intervening decades it had acquired enough local significance to earn a name and a place on the official record. Holy wells in Ireland were frequently associated with particular saints, local clergy, or healing traditions, and the name here hints at some connection to the Catholic community of the area, though the specifics have not been preserved in what survives.