Holy well, Lamoge, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Holy Sites & Wells
In the townland of Lamoge, in the south of County Kilkenny, there is a holy well.
That much is certain. Holy wells are among the oldest continuously venerated sites in Ireland, pre-Christian in origin yet absorbed wholesale into Catholic practice, typically associated with a local saint and visited on that saint's feast day in a ritual known as a pattern. Offerings left at such sites, rags tied to nearby branches, coins pressed into soft ground or stone, speak to a continuity of devotion that formal religious architecture rarely matches. The well at Lamoge is recorded as a monument, which places it in a long tradition of such sites across the Irish landscape, but the particular details of its patron, its history, and its current condition remain, for now, undocumented in any publicly available form.