Holy Well, Keave, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Holy Sites & Wells
In a field in Keave, County Galway, a holy well has been missing for at least a century, present only as a name on a map.
That combination, a place thoroughly documented and yet entirely absent, gives this site its quietly unsettling character. Holy wells in Ireland were rarely grand structures; typically a natural spring, sometimes enclosed by a stone surround or sheltered by a lone hawthorn, they held deep significance in local devotional life, serving as sites of pilgrimage, prayer, and pattern days observed on a saint's feast. The well at Keave belonged to that tradition, at least on paper.
The first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded it precisely, marked and named in the south-east corner of a field. By the time the third edition was published in 1915, something had changed. The cartographers retained the name but dropped the symbol, suggesting the physical feature had already disappeared or become unrecognisable. No visible surface trace survives today. Whether the spring silted up, was deliberately filled in during land improvement works, or simply dried out over time, the record does not say. What remains is the place-name alone, still anchoring a memory of water and devotion to a particular corner of a particular field.