Tobermaconry, Knocknacarragh, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Holy Sites & Wells
Some places survive only as absences.
On scrubland on the western outskirts of Galway city, roughly two hundred metres south of the coast road and close to the shore, there is no visible trace of a holy well that once had a name, a location, and presumably a purpose. Holy wells, typically natural springs associated with a local saint or folk tradition, were once mapped, visited, and maintained across Ireland in their thousands. This one has simply gone.
The well appears on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, marked beside a laneway that ran down to the seashore. Its name, rendered as Tobermaconry, is thought to derive from Tobar Mac Conraoi, suggesting an association with the Mac Conraoi family, a Connacht sept with deep roots in the region. By the time the third edition of the same map was produced in 1945, the cartographers had added the words "in Ruins" and a cross symbol denoting a site rather than a standing feature. Whatever structure or setting had once defined the well had already been lost. Nothing has been recovered since.