Toberbullaun, Kilnanare, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Holy Sites & Wells
There is a holy well in Kilnanare, County Kerry, that has effectively ceased to exist in any visible sense, yet it remains recorded as a place of some significance.
The ground is waterlogged pasture, level and unremarkable, and there is nothing to mark where the well once was. The spring itself has been diverted to the north side of a field boundary, drawn away by drainage works at some point, leaving the original site with neither water nor stonework to indicate what stood there.
What makes the place quietly interesting is the association, passed down through local knowledge rather than any surviving physical evidence, with a bullaun stone. Bullauns are boulders or standing stones with one or more cup-shaped depressions ground into their surface, and they appear frequently alongside holy wells and early ecclesiastical sites across Ireland. Their precise function is debated, but they are generally understood as belonging to the early Christian or pre-Christian ritual landscape, sometimes used for grinding, sometimes regarded as having healing or protective properties. The combination of a holy well and a bullaun stone at a single location was not unusual, and such pairings often indicate a site with a long history of use and local veneration. The well here was known as Toberbullaun, the name itself folding together the Irish word tobar, meaning well or spring, and a direct reference to the stone that once accompanied it.