Saint Clomaun's Well, Duncormick Hill, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Holy Sites & Wells
A holy well that has been misnamed on every map since 1839 is an unusual starting point for any story, but this one in County Wexford compounds the confusion pleasingly.
The Ordnance Survey recorded it in gothic lettering as St. Clómaun's Well on both its 1839 and 1925 six-inch editions, a rendering that garbles the original Irish name. Locally, people simply called it St. Clement's Well, as reported in the Wexford People in July 1954, a pronunciation that drifted still further from the source. The name behind the misspelling is Colmán, one of the most common saints' names in early Irish Christianity; there are so many Saint Colmáns documented that it is not possible to say which one was being commemorated here.
The well itself sits at the foot of a steep east-facing slope on the western bank of a wide, north-to-south running river, right at the margin where land meets tidal mud-flats. A natural spring feeds into a stone-lined channel, roughly 0.6 metres wide and 2.1 metres long, directed towards the river. In 1954, a concrete U-shaped wall with a basin and overflow channel was installed just to the south of this older structure, modernising the site in a way that was common for holy wells still receiving some devotion. It was during this 1954 construction work that things became genuinely interesting. Workers uncovered a stone inscribed with the letters RC and the date 1696, along with a second stone bearing the imprint of a human foot, a portion of a cross, and part of what appears to have been a font. Foot-shaped carvings at holy wells are not unusual in an Irish context, sometimes associated with inauguration rites or acts of devotion, but the combination of objects here suggested a site with layered significance going back at least to the late seventeenth century, and very probably much further. None of these stones remain at the location today.