Holy well, Randalstown, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Holy Sites & Wells

Holy well, Randalstown, Co. Wicklow

At Randalstown in County Wicklow, a spring emerges from a break in a south-east-facing slope and disappears, somewhat unceremoniously, into a disused stand pipe.

It is a quiet, utilitarian ending for a water source that was once considered capable of healing the sick.

The well's former reputation for curative powers is recorded in the Ordnance Survey Letters, a series of nineteenth-century field notes compiled as part of the great mapping project that swept across Ireland in the 1830s. The version cited here comes from Micheál Ó Flannagáin's 1928 edition of the Wicklow material. Holy wells of this kind were once central to local devotional life, visited on particular feast days, credited with remedies for ailments ranging from eye complaints to rheumatism, and maintained through the careful observance of rounds, prayers, and offerings. What made this one worth recording was precisely that reputation for healing. What makes it quietly melancholy now is the note that no local traditions have survived. The knowledge of why people came, which saint may have been honoured here, and what rituals once marked the place has been lost entirely.

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Pete F
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