Well, Inch St. Lawrence North, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Utility Structures

Well, Inch St. Lawrence North, Co. Limerick

Tucked into a gravelled pull-in beside a minor Limerick road, this small oval of water was once considered a credible medical resource.

The 1923 Ordnance Survey six-inch map labels it plainly as a chalybeate spa well, chalybeate being the term for water naturally impregnated with iron salts, which gave such springs a reputation for therapeutic use across Europe from the seventeenth century onwards. What survives today is a modest enclosure of roughly hewn mortared limestone, partial walls rising to about 1.1 metres, and a stone pillar to the south. Beneath an alcove set into the south wall, just above the waterline, local knowledge holds that a rounded prayer-stone still rests out of sight. That combination, mineral water and a devotional object, is characteristic of Irish holy wells, where older religious customs frequently attached themselves to sites already valued for their waters.

By 1840, when the Ordnance Survey Letters recorded it in some detail, the well sat at the northwest corner of Pust South Townland, on the south side of the road running between Croom and Caherconlish. It was described as roughly three feet in diameter and covered by a small structure about five feet high. The surveyor noted that its water was esteemed good and proceeded from iron, and that it was said to be equally useful for liver complaints and scorbutic affections, the latter referring to scurvy or skin conditions associated with nutritional deficiency. Whether those claims were widely believed or simply reported out of local courtesy is difficult to say, but the well was considered significant enough to mark, describe, and cover.

The site sits immediately south-west of the road, north of poorly-drained pasture, and is accessible from the gravelled area beside it. The stone walls have sustained damage from car collisions in recent years, so what a visitor sees today is a partial structure rather than an intact enclosure. The prayer-stone, if it remains, is not visible from above the waterline, so the alcove in the south wall is the detail worth pausing over. The well does not announce itself; the gravel and the low stone walls could easily pass for a field boundary at a glance.

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