Green Natives

Fifty Holy Wells #13

Well of the Holy Cross, Gleninagh, County Clare

My son doesn’t like it here. He thinks the place is spooky. He is twelve, which must be accounted for, and he has never liked overhanging, ponderous trees of the kind which line the lane which snakes down to the well of the holy cross. To me, on the other hand, the lane is beautiful: weeping ash trees fringed with wild garlic blossoms, dark and inviting, lead down to a dead end by which two ruined stone buildings, clad in ivy, stand sentinel over a well, a castle, and the seashore.

I suppose I can see his point. There is a sense of stillness here, or heaviness; of something that has ended. We are on the south coast of Galway Bay, in the Burren, and we have taken a turn off the main road down this twisty lane that leads to the sea. There is nothing here but ruins: the two old cottages, and a great Norman tower house keeping watch over the waves. Even the fence round the castle is broken and unloved. A lot of Ireland is like this. All the newbuilt, angular, concrete ugliness that has been smeared across the nation since the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy took off in the nineties can’t quite wipe away the sadness and decay that still lurks underneath. I like that sadness, I suppose. Decay draws me in, and ruins are a magnet. Some germ in me sees its partner here. Obviously my son does not feel the same, for which, on balance, I am grateful.

He does like the castle though, and the sea:

Son, tower, dog, cross.

Not everything is ruin. The well itself is clearly cared for, tended, and visited. It’s a strange little construction: like a cave, built into a hillock under a great old ash tree. The well house is constructed of rough stone, and has apparently been here since at least the fifteenth century. When we visit, it looks freshly painted:

The little grey cross on top gives the well its name: Tobar Na Croise Naofa, or the well of the holy cross. Thomas Cooke, visiting in the 1840s, suggested that the well was also dedicated to St Laurence. The researcher for the Ordnance Survey Letters, the great survey of Ireland that was carried out in the 1830s, also discovered this hidden gem:

About three hundred yards to the north of this Church there is a Holy Well dedicated to the Holy Cross, and called from it Tobar na Croiche Naoimh, i.e., Fons crucis sanctae, at which Stations were performed in honour of the Holy Cross. This Well has over it a little turry on the summit of which is the symbol of the Redemption of Man. Over it grows a very old elder tree which exhibits a good crop of votive rags, left on it principally by people who performed Stations there for the good of the eyes.

There is no elder tree now, and no rags either. At the centre of the bright white well house is a small arched door, that leads to the well itself. Inside, the grotto is a contrast with what surrounds it:

Notice the lilies peeking into the bottom right of the picture. Somebody has placed a fresh bunch of them in a jar. The water in the well seems fresh enough: I wouldn’t venture to drink it, but I might use it on my eyes. People clearly still come here with their prayers. You can see what they bring if you stick your head through the arch and properly enter the underworld:

All of these colourful little figures look like they are banding together to hold off the elements. From all around them, like besieging armies, approaches the damp, the green, the mould, the lichen, the moss - all of the creeping things that creep through the wet nooks and crannies of the Irish west. No concrete, no damp courses, can keep them out for long. They are the natives here, and they dwell, like the prayers of the sick and the faithful, in the old wellhouses of Connacht.

Outside, though, the air is clear, as it always is around Galway Bay. Gleninagh shore is silent and still: spooky for some, perhaps, but not for me. We walk on the beach and explore the castle, my son and I, until the red sun sets over the city on the further shore. We watch until the fireball disappears beyond the mountains of Connemara. Then we turn around, and go home.