Bride's Well, Brideswell Big, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Holy Sites & Wells
A shovel-shaped stone beside a holy well is an unusual thing to encounter in a County Wexford field, but this one had a purpose.
Known as St Bride's track, it measures roughly 0.4 metres by 0.2 to 0.33 metres, and was almost certainly used as a flume, a channel piece that directed a small flow of water from the well itself. The well sits at the source of a minor stream on a gently north-facing slope, the water running off to join the Mine River some 800 metres to the west-northwest. The site is dedicated to St Brigid, one of Ireland's three patron saints, and the place-name Brideswell reflects that dedication in the straightforward way many Irish townland names record a long-vanished devotional landscape.
According to the antiquarian John O'Donovan, writing around 1840, a pattern was still being held at the well until approximately 1800. A pattern, in Irish tradition, was an annual gathering at a holy well or saint's site, combining prayer, procession, and often a good deal of socialising. The fact that it had lapsed only a generation or so before O'Donovan's time suggests it was a living practice well into the late eighteenth century. The site does not stand alone: a conjoined circular hut-site lies nearby, and archaeological excavation there revealed a lintelled stream channel running into and out of one of the structures, which had been left unroofed. The adjacent chamber was corbelled, meaning its roof was constructed by progressively overlapping stones, though that roof eventually collapsed. Glass and pottery recovered during excavation point to the structures being built and used during the seventeenth or eighteenth century, placing them in the same general period as the declining pattern. A burial ground associated with the site lies approximately 140 metres to the south-east, adding another layer to what is a quietly complex sacred landscape concentrated in a small area of north Wexford.
