Toberflannan, Knock, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Holy Sites & Wells
A circular stone chamber stands in the south-west corner of a graveyard in Knock, Co. Galway, roofless and roughly two metres across, built to enclose a holy well that was dry the last time anyone formally recorded it.
The structure, which has a doorway facing north and a small alcove cut into its eastern wall, is the kind of carefully considered enclosure that speaks to a long tradition of venerating particular springs as sacred, curative, or intercessory. Holy wells were focal points for patterns, the seasonal gatherings of prayer and ritual that once marked the Irish devotional calendar, and the fact that this one was enclosed in mortared stone at all suggests it was once considered worth the effort of protection.
The well is properly called Tobar Flannáin, dedicated to St Flannan, a seventh-century bishop associated with Killaloe in Co. Clare whose cult evidently spread well beyond his home territory. The graveyard that contains it also holds a second well in its south-east corner, this one associated with St Colman, though far less survives there. Where Tobar Flannáin retains its circular chamber with a rectangular stone surround at the centre, St Colman's Well is now nothing more than a small unenclosed pool on the bank of a stream, measuring less than half a metre east to west. The wells were noted by Hardiman as far back as 1846, and again by Mason in 1950, who recorded offerings still present at the site. By the time of the most recent survey visit, the offerings had gone, leaving the chamber itself as the main surviving evidence of what was once an active place of local devotion.
Both wells sit close to a stream that runs along the graveyard boundary, roughly forty metres south-west of the church. The Tobar Flannáin chamber is the more substantial and visible of the two, and the small alcove in its eastern wall is worth looking for once inside the doorway, a detail that suggests the space was arranged with some deliberate intention, perhaps for the placing of an image or votive object.