Toberbanon, Tawnyinah, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Holy Sites & Wells

Toberbanon, Tawnyinah, Co. Mayo

In the rough pasture of Tawnyinah, surrounded by coniferous forestry and easy to walk past without a second glance, a small pool sits beside a stream with watercress growing so thickly across its surface that the water beneath is almost entirely hidden.

This is a holy well, a site of the kind that once formed the quiet infrastructure of Irish devotional life, where local communities would gather, pray, and sometimes carry out rounds, a ritual circuit of prayer performed at fixed points around the well. What makes this one quietly arresting is precisely how little of it remains visible.

The well appears under the name Toberbannon on Ordnance Survey six-inch maps from both 1838 and 1919, which places it firmly within the landscape of recorded Irish topography even if it has attracted little attention since. The pool itself is small, roughly subcircular, approximately 1.7 metres wide and no more than half a metre deep. When last inspected it held little water. Beneath the dense watercress, stones can be felt along the sides of the pool, though whether these are the remnants of a deliberate enclosing wall or simply loose field stones is impossible to say without clearance. A short channel runs from the well southward to the adjacent stream, a feature common to managed well sites where drainage or overflow was deliberately directed. The name Toberbannon follows the Irish tobar, meaning well, with Bannon likely a personal name, possibly a saint, though nothing in the surviving record clarifies who that figure was or what local tradition once attached to this spot.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Toberbanon, Tawnyinah, Co. Mayo. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement