On the lookout for St Gregory’s Well, Tobar i Choill, in Glenbeigh, a chance conversation in the excellent Emilie’s café alerted us to St Finán’s Well. St Gregory proved elusive, too overgrown, but St Finán’s Well turned out to be a much loved and distinguished well in an imposing situation, located about two kilometres out […]
St Michael
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 […]
Sun bright Fionán, jugfuls of whiskey & a raging priest
Back to Corca Dhuibhne, the Dingle Peninsula, and a stop off at Annascaul to find Tobar na Croise, Well of the Cross. Annascaul is a colourful and attractive little village, best know perhaps as being the home of Tom Crean of South Pole exploration fame. On his retirement from the Navy he and his wife […]
An Epic Pilgrimage for Michaelmas
There is a very picturesque area near Baile an Sceilg, Ballinskelligs, on the Iveragh Peninsula in Kerry known as the Glen. It stretches from Duchalla Head to Puffin Island, encompassing the enigmatic Skellig Rocks nine miles off the coast. The most famous rock, Sceilg Mhíchíl, Skellig Michael, was an early Christian settlement, where the monks […]
Trekking through Glens: Tobar na nGealt
… A long time he went faring through all Ireland, poking his way into hard rocky clefts, shouldering through ivy bushes, unsettling falls of pebbles in narrow defiles, wading estuaries, breasting summits, trekking through glens, till he found the natural welcome of Glen Bolcáin. That place is a pastoral asylum, where all madmen Of Ireland […]
Tobar Mhíchíl, St Michael’s Well, Lixnaw
I suppose I must have visited nearly 400 holy wells over the last few years and some are still capable of surprise, none more so than this one in Lixnaw, North Kerry, dedicated to St Michael the Archangel: Tobar Mhíchíl. The Site The well is clearly signed off the R557 just before reaching the village […]