Saint Mary's Well, Kenmare Place, Killarney, Co. Kerry

There is no grand facade here, no inscription announcing its purpose; just a square-headed doorway in a single-storey drum of stone, built to shelter something considered worth protecting.

The well house dates to around 1850, a period when many holy wells across Ireland, sites long associated with healing, pilgrimage, or simply local memory, were given formal stone coverings rather than being left as open springs. The single-bay, single-storey design is modest by design: a freestanding round building whose sole purpose is to mark and protect the well beneath it. Inside, a flight of steps descends from the door opening down to the water itself, a common arrangement for well houses of this kind, allowing access to the source while keeping it enclosed and, presumably, dry underfoot. The roof was replaced in the late twentieth century, suggesting the structure remained in use, or at least in good enough repair to be worth maintaining, well over a century after it was first built. Its position at the rear of the town hall is worth noting too; wells dedicated to Saint Mary were often sited close to the centre of a settlement, and this one has ended up, whether by accident of later town planning or original intent, immediately adjacent to a civic building rather than out in open countryside.