Holy well, Ballycurrany, Co. Cork

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Holy Sites & Wells

Holy well, Ballycurrany, Co. Cork

On a hillside above the Leamlara to Carrigtwohill road in east Cork, a small stone-enclosed well sits quietly in the landscape, its corbelled roof, a technique of overlapping stones that form a self-supporting dome without mortar, sheltering a recess still used for votive offerings.

Nearby lie two hand-carved stone figurines and a stone cross, modest in size but striking in their presence. The surrounding trees are hung with rags, a practice common at Irish holy wells where strips of cloth, sometimes called clooties, are left as offerings, often tied while a prayer is made and left to decay as the prayer is released. It is an assemblage that belongs to no single period; the fabric of folk devotion layered over something much older.

Access to the well is gained by crossing a short stone-covered stream to the south, roughly four metres in length, which channels water down the hillside. On the fifteenth of August, the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, Mass is celebrated at an altar positioned to the rear of the well. This date is one of the most commonly observed pattern days at Irish holy wells, when communities would gather for prayer, and sometimes for music and assembly, continuing a cycle of observance that in many cases predates Christianity and was simply absorbed into the ecclesiastical calendar. The two carved figurines, one standing at roughly forty-four centimetres tall and the other at fifty-eight, are an unusual feature; human figures in stone at well sites are not unheard of in Ireland, but they are far from common, and their origin and age are not recorded here.

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