Holy well, Kiltealy, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Holy Sites & Wells
Not every holy well is a place of pilgrimage and prayer.
Some exist mainly on paper, as names inscribed in careful Gothic lettering on an Ordnance Survey map, their sacred status more a cartographic decision than a record of living devotion. The supposed site of St. Patrick's Well near Kiltealy, in the south Wexford uplands, belongs to that ambiguous category. The well itself no longer survives, and there is no evidence that it was ever venerated in the way that genuine holy wells typically were, through pattern days, rounds, or the leaving of votive offerings.
The story of the site is largely one of cartographic drift. A well does appear on the 1839 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, positioned on the western side of the R730 road just south of Kiltealy village. By the 1924 edition, however, it had acquired a name, described in Gothic lettering as the site of St. Patrick's Well, a typographical convention the OS traditionally reserved for antiquities and places of historical or religious significance. Whether the compilers of that later edition were working from local tradition, an earlier source, or simply applying a label to a feature already on the map is unclear. Ua Dubhgaill included it in a listing published in 1925, which suggests some currency for the name at that time, but the physical well had apparently already disappeared by then, if it ever held any special significance at all. The site sits on the eastern side of a small north-south valley, with a stream running roughly thirty metres to the west.