Mary's Well, Ballygow, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Holy Sites & Wells

Mary’s Well, Ballygow, Co. Wexford

On an east-facing slope in County Wexford, a shallow dip in a pasture field is all that remains of what was once considered a sacred site.

The depression is easy to miss, and gives little away, yet it marks the location of a holy well, the kind of modest, water-bearing feature that once served as a focal point for local devotion across rural Ireland. Holy wells were typically associated with a patron saint and visited on or around that saint's feast day, often for purposes of prayer or healing. This one was dedicated to St. Mary.

The well appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1839, labelled in gothic lettering as St. Mary's Well, the typographic convention the OS used to mark antiquities and sites of religious or historical significance. The same label appears again on the 1925 edition of the same map, confirming that the site retained its name and its recognised status across nearly a century of surveying. Beyond the cartographic record, the specifics of its local history, whether it was a site of pattern days, cures, or other practices common to holy wells in Leinster, are not documented in what survives. The slight depression visible in the field today suggests the well has long since silted or dried up, leaving only a faint scar in the ground where the water once collected.

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