TreeAlive
‹ Sites and Monuments Record, Ireland

Sites and Monuments Record · Ireland

Ritual site - holy well

Castle Ellis, County Kilkenny, Ireland

Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915) covering the location of Ritual site - holy well, Castle Ellis, County Kilkenny, with a pin at the register's coordinates
Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915), covering this location. Courtesy of the National Library of Scotland. The pin is ours, placed from the register's coordinates.

The record

Townland
Castle Ellis
County
Kilkenny
Country
Ireland
First-edition OS map
Bastionfort Well
Latest-edition OS map
Bastionfort Well
Coordinates
52.62741, -7.07478
SMR number
KK020-059----

Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

4 historical maps cover this location, the earliest the 1790 map "Composite: Ireland." (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries).

Historical maps covering this location

  • 1790 · Composite: Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1869 · Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1891 · Ireland 16 (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1904 · Sheet 14, 1904 (University Library, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

Get directions ↗

This record in the National Monuments Service's Historic Environment Viewer ↗

The National Monuments Service's description

In flat marshy field, subsequently reclaimed, c. 40m of an E-W flowing stream which flows into the River Barrow, on the W edge of Gowran village. Described in the OS Namebooks (O'Donovan et al. c. 1840) as, 'Tobar bhaiste an phoill = Baptism well of the hole or pit...A holy well...said to be the best water in all Ireland: it being measured and weighed by an Englishman who pronounced it such'. According to Drennan (1965, 53) the well was used for religious purposes before the piped water supply was installed. A circular concrete wall with rounded top encloses the well, with a metal gate in the entrance gap.

See attached photograph (7 July 1992)

Compiled by: Jean Farrelly

Date of upload: 14 December 2020

References

Drennan, C. 1965 Gowran. Old Kilkenny Review, vol. 17, 59-61.

Nearby in the register

Other entries of the same register within about three miles of this one, by straight line.

Sites and Monuments Record data: National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Record text is reproduced unchanged. National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland · CC BY 4.0
All Ritual site - holy well in Kilkenny All County Kilkenny records All Ireland Heritage registers Historical markers (US)National Register of Historic Places (US)
See your own family's places on a living map