Holy well, Killeedy North, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Holy Sites & Wells

Holy well, Killeedy North, Co. Limerick

A small circular opening in the ground, barely forty-four centimetres across and sixty centimetres deep, framed by three stones cut to shape its rim, with no covering structure above it at all.

What makes this well in the graveyard of Killeedy North quietly arresting is not the well itself but what surrounds it: a cluster of repurposed limestone fragments set into the ground a little over a metre away, including two corbels carved with human faces and a block bearing an ogee arch from a window light. Corbels are projecting stones cut to support a beam or vault; here, stripped from their original context, they have found a second life as markers beside a place of pilgrimage. All three carved pieces are late-medieval in date and appear to have been taken from the nearby ruined church, giving the well an accidental quality of salvage and continuity that no planned monument quite achieves.

The well is dedicated to St Ita, the patroness of west Limerick, who is said to have founded her monastery on this very ground in the early medieval period. Rounds, the traditional Irish devotional practice of walking a prescribed circuit while reciting prayers, are made here on the 15th of January, her feast day, as recorded by Caoimhín Ó Danachair in 1955. Folklore collected from schoolchildren in the late 1930s, now held in the Schools' Collection of the National Folklore Collection, fills in the texture of the observance: pilgrims would walk from the well to a nearby grotto and back three times, each circuit accompanied by a rosary, before taking a sip of the water. Holy pictures, medals, and vases of flowers were placed on the stones beside it, and the well was cleaned out periodically to keep the water clear. One account notes that a woman who took the water home to boil found it would not boil, a detail that belongs to a widespread folklore tradition in which holy well water resists any use that is not devotional. An uncut central block among the three marker stones bears a Latin cross cut by pilgrims' hands over time.

The well sits on the western side of the graveyard at Killeedy, in the parish of the same name in west County Limerick, close to the ruins of the church from which its carved stones almost certainly came. The 15th of January remains the principal occasion for visiting, when the site draws people from across the county, but the 1938 account notes it is visited at all times during the year. The well has no superstructure, so it requires a moment of looking down rather than up; the carved faces on the corbel stones are easy to miss if you are not specifically looking for them among the other fragments settled into the ground.

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