Sunday Well, Springhouse, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Holy Sites & Wells
A railway wall cuts straight across the northern edge of this well, built directly on top of its old rubble stonework as if the rail line simply arrived one day and the well quietly accepted the imposition.
The two structures now share the same stone, separated by centuries of intention, and religious objects hang from both the railway wall above and the thorn trees alongside, the usual markers of an Irish holy well that has been visited and tended and believed in across a long stretch of time.
The well's Irish name, recorded by John O'Donovan in the Ordnance Survey Namebook of 1840, is Tobar Righ an Domhnaigh, meaning the Well of the King of the Sabbath, or the Lord's Day. O'Donovan noted that it took its name from the habit of people coming to it on Sundays seeking cures for illness, a practice common at holy wells across Ireland, where the act of visiting on a particular day, often walking a prescribed circuit known as a pattern or rounds, was considered essential to the well's efficacy. The OS Field Memorandums record that the Rosary was recited here. The well itself is a modest rectangular structure, roughly two metres long and just over a metre wide, built of random rubble stone with a break in the southern side where four steps descend from the surrounding pasture down to the water level. A small stream feeds it through an inlet on the eastern side.
The well sits at the edge of a field in Springhouse, close against the railway track, the kind of spot that is easy to pass without registering what it is. The thorn trees beside it, draped with offerings, are often the clearest sign that a place of this kind has not been forgotten.