Holy well, Drumcliff, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Holy Sites & Wells

Holy well, Drumcliff, Co. Sligo

Near Drumcliff in County Sligo, on a gently sloping stretch of pasture that faces roughly south-south-west, there is a holy well that no longer exists to look at.

The ground gives nothing away. No stonework, no votive offerings caught on a hawthorn, no shallow depression that might hint at what once lay beneath. The well has been filled in, and the surface is as unremarkable as the fields around it.

What makes the site worth noting is precisely this gap between the map and the land. The well appears by name on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of both 1836 to 1837 and 1940 to 1941, meaning it was considered a feature significant enough to record across more than a century of surveying. Holy wells in Ireland were rarely just water sources; they were typically associated with a local saint, used for patterns, which were seasonal gatherings combining religious observance with communal activity, and visited for the curative or spiritual properties attributed to the water. That this one was named and marked across two separate OS editions suggests it held some recognised place in the local landscape, even if whatever traditions surrounded it have long since faded from view. By the time the more recent survey work caught up with the site, it had already been filled in, leaving only the cartographic record as evidence of its existence.

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Pete F
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