Ritual site - holy well

The National Monuments Service's description

In the field immediately NW of the medieval church of Ullard (KK025-038001-) on an E-facing slope, in pasture. The holy well 70m to the NNW of the church. There are two bullaun stones (KK025-038006-; KK025-038008-) 21m and 19m to the SSE and S respectively. The well is dedicated to St Fiachra, who according to tradition founded a church here in the latter part of the 6th-century (Vigors 1893, 257). According to Vigors (ibid., 258), the water from this well reputedly had the power to prevent death by drowning. According to O’Leary (1948, 25), "On the 8th of February [the saint’s feast day] many of the people, old and young, still make their penitential rounds at the Holy Well and perform their devotions at the church, where they finish by placing crosses of twig in the east window in honour of St. Fiachra." Seldom less than 30, and this year 1948, sixty pilgrims made their rounds, 'speaking to no one, only to God and poor St. Feeragh," as one old pilgrim puts it'. The holy well is located at the SW end of a long, rectangular, stone-lined channel (L 11.2m; Wth 1.6m) aligned NE-SW. The holy well, which contains the spring, is a circular, stone-lined structure (D 1.14m; diam. 1.10m; T 0.16m; diam. of hole 0.12m), covered with a flat rectangular slab. A millstone (diam. 0.8m, 0.4m of which projects northward from the retaining wall) has been built into the S side of the well opening, where it functions as a step down to the water.

See attached photographs:
KK025-038003-_01 Well from NE with bullaun stone (KK025-038008-) and church (KK025-038001-) in background
KK025-038003-_02 Reused millstone on S side of retaining wall of well

Compiled by: Jean Farrelly

Date of upload: 15 February 2017

References

Vigors, P. D. 1893 The antiquities of Ullard, County Kilkenny, 1892. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 23, 251-8.

O'Leary, J. 1948 Ullard. Old Kilkenny Review 2, 22-25.