Tobercameen, Caherminnaun, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Holy Sites & Wells

Tobercameen, Caherminnaun, Co. Clare

A small stone well on a gentle south-westerly slope in County Clare was once considered capable of healing diseased eyes.

The well, known as Tobercameen or Tobar Chaimín, is a compact drystone structure, built without mortar in a roughly rectangular form, with steps leading down into a shallow depression at its base. It was found dry when examined, though three statues and a crucifix were present, suggesting the site retains some devotional significance even now.

The well is dedicated to Saint Caimin, and local tradition long held that sore eyes could be cured by performing religious rites here and at a nearby cist, a type of stone-lined burial or ritual pit, located within a cashel roughly fifty metres to the north. A cashel is a stone-walled enclosure of early medieval date, used variously for settlement or ecclesiastical purposes, and the one here appears to have contained the remains of Kilcameen Church. The well's name appears on Ordnance Survey maps from 1842 and 1920, and Robinson's map of 1977 labels it explicitly as an eye-cure site. The antiquarian T.J. Westropp documented the healing tradition at the turn of the twentieth century, and the ritual practice was noted again by later researchers including Swinfen in 1992. By 1839, however, the scholar Eugene Curry, compiling the Ordnance Survey Letters, was already recording that stations, the rounds of prayer and ritual movement associated with such holy wells, had formerly been performed here but were by then almost entirely abandoned. The site sits within a wider landscape of considerable depth; the cashel Caherballykinvarga lies roughly 250 metres to the east-north-east, and various enclosures and field systems cluster around the area, pointing to sustained human activity across many centuries.

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