Toberania, Clerragh, Co. Roscommon
Co. Roscommon |
Utility Structures
In the pastureland of Clerragh, in County Roscommon, there is a holy well that has effectively ceased to exist.
It appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of both 1837 and 1914, marked dutifully on a south-west-facing slope, carrying a name that begins with the Irish word tobar, meaning well. But visit the field today and there is nothing to see. The ground has closed over it.
What little is known comes from a 1972 description by Gannon, who recorded it as a stone hollow, the kind of simple, unlined depression often associated with local holy wells across Ireland. Such sites were typically gathering points for patterns, the seasonal devotional visits, usually on a saint's feast day, that combined prayer with communal celebration. Toberania, however, appears never to have attracted that kind of attention, or if it did, no record of veneration survives. By the time Gannon visited, it seems the site had already lost whatever ritual significance it may once have held. Now it lies somewhere beneath pasture, its exact position a matter of cartographic inference rather than visible feature.