Well, Singland, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Utility Structures
Somewhere in a field near the old road at Singland, on the southern edge of Limerick city, a spring well sits largely forgotten beneath a coating of leaves and greenish, weedy deposit.
It is known locally as King William's Well, and tradition holds that it supplied Williamite forces with water during the sieges of Limerick in 1690. That association alone would make it worth noting, but the well also carries a stranger piece of folklore: a large flag or military standard is said to lie buried in a nearby field, left behind, presumably, from the encampment that once occupied the area.
The local historian Maurice Lenihan described the well in 1866, placing it roughly fifty yards from the high road and nearly opposite Singland House. He noted a stream of pure water running from the well down to the road, where it joined another stream coming from the well of Shesharee, located some distance away on a different road. Lenihan visited on what he called a beautiful evening and found the well deep but effectively invisible, its surface concealed by accumulated leaves and algae. He also observed other traces suggesting the site had once served as a military camp, consistent with the Williamite siege operations that played out across this part of the city in the summer and autumn of 1690. The first siege of Limerick that year, when William III's forces failed to take the city before withdrawing, would have required exactly the kind of reliable fresh water source a spring well provides.
The well sits on poorly drained grassland, with a stream running roughly fifty-five metres to the south-east, and the surrounding area includes patches of scrub and trees visible in aerial photography from 2011 to 2013. There is no formal access or signage, and the site retains the quiet, slightly sodden character of undisturbed field ground on the city's edge. Anyone visiting should expect to search carefully; the well's concealment was already well established by Lenihan's time in the nineteenth century, and little suggests that has changed. The field to which the buried standard tradition is attached is unidentified, which makes that particular detail more atmospheric than actionable, but the landscape itself, low-lying, damp, and cut through with small watercourses, reads convincingly as a place where an army once paused.