Before you plan a visit
Two things to know up front. The well is dry, drained by drainage works in the surrounding area, and it stands on private land behind a house called Iniscara, near the entrance to Howth Golf Club off Carrickbrack Road in Sutton. You cannot simply turn up. Access is by permission only, and the Fingal County Council heritage office is the place to start if you want to arrange it.
So why bother? Because the folklore attached to this small stone enclosure is some of the richest of any well around Dublin, and because it sits within an easy walk of one of Ireland’s more famous graveyards.
Ireland has an estimated 3,000 holy wells, roughly 60 of them in Fingal. St Fintan’s stands out for its ties to the area’s earliest church and for the tales that cling to it.
The healing well and its stories
The well was renowned for curing stomach ailments. The ritual was specific: drink the water from cupped hands, walk three times around the well, and tie a rag or ribbon to the well-tree, which was said to carry the ailment away as it rotted. Two beliefs in particular were attached to the water and the tree:
- Water that would not boil, taken as a sign of the well’s sacred, unchangeable nature.
- Wood that would not burn, so branches from the well-tree were said to refuse the fire.
The best-known tale, recorded in 1937, tells of a man who went to cut branches from the tree and three times saw a vision of his house ablaze. Twice he returned to find it untouched. The third time he ignored the warning, and his house burned down. A separate account from the 1930s reports an angel seen at the well.
History and the name
The church that once stood here gave Sutton its Irish name, Cill Fhionntain, ‘the church of Fintan’, and the monastic foundation is thought to date to the 6th or 7th century. The ruined old church in the nearby cemetery is an early Norman structure, probably built using material from earlier buildings on the site; it is not the modern parish church, which is a 20th-century building.
Who Fintan was is less settled than the name suggests. At least twenty-five saints called Fintan appear in the Irish record, and none is firmly linked to this spot; the name may even reach back to a pre-Christian figure attached to the place. The mythological Fintan who is said to have survived the great flood is a different character again, often confused with the saints.
The well itself is now a dry-stone enclosure showing subsidence that predates the 1970s, with a metal beam spanning the entrance carrying the painted words ‘St Fintan pray for us’. A local account from 1934 remembered its water as ‘icy cold, even in very hot weather’, and said it had never been known to run dry. Its feast day is 17 February; pattern gatherings were once held then, and veneration at the site continued into the 1980s.
Visiting, and what’s nearby
Because the well is on private ground, arrange access in advance through the Fingal heritage office rather than crossing anyone’s land uninvited. There are no facilities, signage or toilets, the ground is uneven, and it is treated with care as a place of historic and spiritual significance, so leave the stones and rags as you find them.
The easier draw for most visitors is a short walk away. St Fintan’s Cemetery on Carrickbrack Road is the resting place of Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott, broadcaster Gay Byrne, and former Taoiseach Charles Haughey and President Patrick Hillery, and the ruined old church stands within it. From there the wider Howth peninsula opens up:
- Aideen’s Grave: a legendary dolmen a short walk north along the cliff path. (Aideen’s Grave)
- Bailey Lighthouse: on the tip of Howth Head, over the Irish Sea and the basalt cliffs. (Bailey Lighthouse)
- Black Linn Loop: a scenic section of the Howth Cliff Walk. (Black Linn Loop)