Holy well, Coolnaha, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Holy Sites & Wells

Holy well, Coolnaha, Co. Mayo

A small rectangular pool, roughly four metres by two, sits in a natural hollow in a Mayo pasture, fed by a spring that has likely been drawing people to this spot for centuries.

The well is enclosed today by a post and wire fence, its water choked with pond weed, and a field drain carries the overflow westward into planted forestry. It is an easy place to overlook, and that quality of quiet neglect is itself part of what makes it worth attention.

The well appears on the 1916 Ordnance Survey six-inch map under the name Tubberthana, a phonetic rendering of the Irish tobar, meaning well, combined with a personal or saint's name now difficult to pin down with certainty. What the map could not easily convey is the density of early medieval remains gathered around it. Some twenty metres to the north-west, a ridge carries an ecclesiastical enclosure, the kind of roughly circular boundary that would once have marked out sacred or monastic ground. Within that enclosure sits a ringfort, a circular earthwork of the type widely associated with early Irish farming settlements and high-status households, as well as a children's burial ground and a bullaun stone. Bullaun stones are boulders or rocks with one or more cup-shaped hollows ground into them; they appear frequently near early Christian sites and holy wells, and the water that collects in them was often considered to carry curative or protective properties. To find all four features clustered together above a single well suggests that this corner of Coolnaha held considerable local significance across a long period.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Holy well, Coolnaha, Co. Mayo. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement