In a level stretch of County Waterford farmland, close to the Roman Catholic church of Newtown, there is a place marked on maps as a holy well that no longer has anything to show for itself. No stone surround, no votive offerings, no trickle of water. Just a location on a landscape, and a name that has outlasted whatever was once there.

Holy wells, which are natural springs or water sources associated with a saint or feast day and traditionally visited for healing or blessing, were once extraordinarily common across Ireland. This one was dedicated to All Saints, a dedication that is itself relatively unusual, most wells being tied to a specific named saint rather than to the collective calendar feast of 1st November. It appears, marked in the same way, on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of both 1840 and 1926, which tells us it was still considered a meaningful landmark across at least two generations of mapping. Whether it was still actively visited during that period, or whether the cartographers were simply copying an earlier annotation, is impossible to say. By the time anyone thought to look more closely, there were no visible remains and no recorded traditions or local associations to draw on.