Tobernasorney, Ballynacloghy, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Holy Sites & Wells

Tobernasorney, Ballynacloghy, Co. Galway

On a south-facing slope of grassland near the head of Loughnahalla Bay, a small rectangular enclosure of angular limestone boulders surrounds a well that was, according to local tradition, capable of restoring sight.

That enclosure, recorded as roughly 4.3 metres east to west and 3.2 metres north to south, was reportedly built by a person who had bathed his eyes in the well water and recovered his vision. It is an unusual detail: a structure whose very existence is a votive act, a wall raised not as an offering of faith in advance of a cure, but as gratitude after one.

The well is dedicated to St. Sornia, a saint whose name is otherwise obscure. Writing in 1912, a researcher named Holt noted that the well held virtue on any Friday, though the principal occasion for visiting was Garland Sunday, the last Sunday in July, which marks the old Lughnasa festival period and was widely observed across Ireland as a time for pattern days at holy wells. The well itself is a subcircular shaft, drystone-lined in the manner common to such sites, with a naturally hollowed stone basin sitting at its base. Four flagstones at the eastern entrance gap lead down to it. After visiting the well, devotees were said to proceed to St. Sornia's cell, a separate structure lying about sixty metres to the north-west, completing what appears to have been a short but deliberate ritual circuit. Mature ash trees, themselves traditionally associated with holy wells in Ireland, have since grown within the enclosure and caused sections of the surrounding wall to collapse partially, folding the human and the natural together in the way such sites often do over time.

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