Holy well, Castlegar, Co. Galway

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Holy Sites & Wells

Holy well, Castlegar, Co. Galway

A hawthorn bush growing out of a ruined wall, a spring trickling through marshland towards a river, and the faint outline of stones that once formed a deliberate enclosure: what remains of St. Brigid's Well near the Castlegar River in County Galway is easy to overlook and almost impossible to date with certainty.

It sits on the boundary between the townlands of Longford and Castlegar, that liminal kind of location that recurs again and again with holy wells in Ireland, as though the sanctity of such places was understood to belong to no single community in particular.

The well itself is a spring, once enclosed within a rectangular drystone chamber measuring roughly 5.6 metres by 5.3 metres. Drystone construction, built without mortar by carefully fitting stones together, was a common technique for enclosing holy wells, giving them a degree of formality and protection without any great expense. Only the foundation courses of that chamber now survive. According to a reference recorded by O'Flanagan in 1927, a patron, meaning a local festival or pattern day, was held here on the first Sunday in August, a date that corresponds loosely with Lughnasa, the old Irish harvest celebration that was frequently absorbed into the Catholic calendar and attached to particular saints. St. Brigid, whose name the well carries, is one of Ireland's most widely commemorated saints, and her association with wells and with water is found across the country.

A small stream still runs from the well towards the Castlegar River, and a hawthorn bush has taken root in the western wall of the ruined enclosure. The hawthorn's presence is fitting in a quiet, unplanned way: these trees are strongly associated in Irish tradition with holy wells and fairy ground alike, and one growing directly from the stonework suggests the site has been left largely undisturbed for a considerable time.

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