Holy well, Carrigcleena More, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Holy Sites & Wells
At Carrigcleena More in north County Cork, a spring continues to push water up through the ground at a spot where, by the mid-twentieth century, almost every visible trace of a once-active holy well had been erased.
The well itself was destroyed around 1966. The whitethorn tree that stood beside it, traditionally used for hanging votive offerings, rags, or small tokens left by those seeking a cure, had already been cut down roughly a quarter-century before that. The rounds, the prescribed circuit of prayer and ritual movement performed by pilgrims, had stopped even earlier. Yet the water keeps coming.
When Bowman recorded it in 1934, the well was known as Tobar Geal, meaning Bright Well, and measured approximately four and a half feet in diameter. It was credited with curing sore eyes, aching teeth, and infected fingers, the kind of specific, bodily ailments that cluster around particular holy wells across Ireland, each site accumulating its own reputation for a defined range of complaints rather than acting as a general-purpose cure. By Bowman's time, the pattern of devotion had already been fading for around four decades, meaning the rounds had likely ceased sometime in the 1890s. The loss of the whitethorn followed in the late 1900s or early 1910s, and by the 1960s the well structure itself was gone.
What remains is the spring, which continues to rise regardless of what has been built, cut, or cleared above it. There is something quietly stubborn about that fact. The ritual life of the place has long since ended, the physical markers are gone, and yet the water that gave the well its name and its purpose still surfaces at Carrigcleena More.