The well in the woods
Tobar Éanna sits in the trees of Barna Woods, on the left of the road down to Silverstrand, a little past the petrol station on the way out of Barna. It is easy to miss: a stone basin in a clearing, marked by a limestone cross and a bilingual plaque, a short walk in from the roadside. The well is named for St Enda (Naomh Éanna), and the water is said to have risen when he prayed here – reckoned to be some fifteen hundred years ago, in the late fifth or early sixth century.
Enda is the patron saint of the Aran Islands. A warrior-prince of Oriel before his conversion, he gave up the sword, founded the first Irish monastery on Inis Mór, and this spring is remembered as one of his overnight resting places on the way out to Aran. That is the tradition, not the manuscript record – the medieval Lives don’t mention the well – but it is the story the place has carried for centuries.
The turas and the cures
For as long as anyone recorded it, the water has been credited with easing ailments of the eyes and ears; pilgrims bathed their eyes and tied cloths to the bushes around the well. The turas, or rounding, is walked three times clockwise around the basin with prayers, leaving a small offering – a coin, a pin, a scrap of cloth. The big day is the last Sunday of July, Domhnach Chrom Dubh, though some accounts put it on the Saturday.
Who keeps it
The well would have slipped back into the undergrowth without local hands. The Irish Countrywomen’s Association tidied it up in 1979, and in the 1980s Bernie Falvey sourced the limestone cross that stands over it today. In 2022 the local Tidy Towns group, Bailte Slachtmara Bhearna, won a €10,840 Heritage Council grant to restore the boundary wall, the gate, the signage and the cross. They maintain it still, and ask only that visitors leave the stones, the scrub and the offerings as they find them.
Visiting
This is a five-minute stop, not a half-day out – the sensible plan is to fold it into a walk in Barna Woods, a broadleaf wood laced with paths and good for birds. Park at the Barna Woods car park by the main entrance; the well is signposted as part of the Barna Woods and Tobar Éanna trail. There is no café, no toilets and nothing to pay, and the water runs cold all year. From the trees it is a short walk on to Silverstrand and the open view across Galway Bay.