Holy well, Kilcommock Glebe, Co. Longford

Co. Longford |

Holy Sites & Wells

Holy well, Kilcommock Glebe, Co. Longford

A spring issuing from beneath a bare rock outcrop in County Longford carries a name that quietly outranks its modest surroundings.

Known as Cloghree, from the Irish for "the stone of the king", this holy well sits roughly a hundred metres west of Kilcommock Church, where the ground breaks into exposed limestone and a small stream threads away to the south-west. Holy wells in Ireland are typically sites of pattern days and votive offerings, where visitors leave tokens, rags, or rosary beads as acts of devotion. At Cloghree, that tradition has largely faded from view.

The name was recorded in 1837 by John O'Donovan, the nineteenth-century scholar whose work travelling and documenting place names for the Ordnance Survey remains one of the most valuable sources for Irish topographical history. His note, published in the Ordnance Survey Letters for Longford, gives the translation plainly: "the stone of the king". Whether the title refers to a secular ruler, a saint with kingly associations, or some older layer of local belief is not recorded. By 1976, the well was described as a natural, unenclosed spring with no formal structure around it, simply water rising from under rock and moving on. It has since been fenced off, and no votive offerings are visible today, suggesting the devotional life once attached to this spot has quietly ceased.

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