It’s been a busy year for holy well work and the main excitement was the publication of my book Holy Wells of County Cork. This was kindly launched by Gary Branigan, author of Ancient and Holy Wells of Dublin and was hosted by the Working Artist Studios, Ballydehob. The book of course took much longer […]
St Crohane
Wonderful Wells & Wild Weather: squelching around the Iveragh
I’m just back from an excellent long weekend at the inaugural Skellig Coast Archaeology Festival. The weather was atrocious and many events were outside but we were a hardy lot and sallied forth anyway – and there were wells! St Crohane’s Well, Tobar Chrócháin One of the highlights of the programme for me was a […]
Well Hunting in the time of Covid
The last two years have been most strange and disconcerting, and we’re not out of the woods yet. Well hunting has been severely curtailed but I thought it might be interesting to do a quick round up of some of the wells visited during the moments lockdown was lifted. A trip to North Kerry in […]
An Turas: in the footsteps of St Crohane
Tobar an Bhile, St Crohane’s Well near Castle Cove on the Ring of Kerry was the well that originally sparked my interest in Irish holy wells. Way back on the 30th July 1998 (I remember the date exactly as it was my son’s 18th birthday) I left our holiday home in the lashing rain to […]
The Good, the Mad and the Strange: a round up of 2019
A quick round up of some of the more intriguing wells visited in 2019. It’s been a busy year for I officially completed my research on the holy wells in County Cork: 310 wells visited and recorded, and then ventured forth into County Kerry. A long visit to New Zealand followed by a horrible bout […]
Tobar an Bhile & a lot of Serendipity
Many years ago, and I’m talking about the late 1990s, we came for a family holiday in Kerry, staying in a cottage on the old butter road high on the slopes above Coad Mountain not far from Caherdaniel. Whilst in the local shop, I saw a notice about a pattern day at a holy well […]