Ritual site - holy well

The National Monuments Service's description

Located on the E bank of a N-S meandering section of the River Dee or White River. Although Bridget is descended from a section of the Fothairt people known as Uí Bhreasail, who were probably based in Offaly, the many medieval lives of the saint associated her with Faughart in Co. Louth (Ó Riain 2011, 123). Many of these relate the story of how, in order to avoid the attentions of men and pursue a religious life she gouged out her own eyes. In her blind wanderings she washed here face at a well in Lann Leire (Dunleer) that was ever afterwards known as Tobar Brighide, St. Bridget’s Well. Although it had been closed about thirty years by then, the first notice of it in the Ordinance Survey Letters (1836) records its position as in Dunleer ‘about 5 perches E of the road to Drogheda’ (Herity 2012, 261), and local memory had always placed it on the E bank of the river. In 1953 the local school teacher, Joseph Sharkey, identified it when it was described as just a few stones covered in mud from the river (Coyle 1954, 1956, 192-4). The river was drained and widened in 1987 and the well is no longer extant.

Compiled by: Michael Moore

Date of upload: 29 June 2021

References

Coyle M. 1956 Holy wells in the parish of Dunleer in Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society Vol. 2 (1) 192-205

Ó Riain, P. 2011 A dictionary of Irish Saints. Dublin. Four Courts Press.

Coyle, M. 1954 St. Bridget’s Well, Dunleer. Journal of the County Louth Archaeological and Historical Society, 13, No. 2, 175-8.

Herity, M. (ed.) 2012 Ordnance Survey Letters: Londonderry, Fermanagh, Armagh-Monaghan, Louth, Cavan-Leitrim. Dublin, Fourmasters Press