The stones in the graveyard
Almost nothing is left of the monastery St Mogue founded at Clonmore in the sixth century, but the old graveyard around his holy well holds one of the richest little gatherings of early-Christian stonework in County Carlow. Set among the headstones are two high crosses, a couple of dozen cross-slabs carved with interlace and knotwork, an Ogham stone in the north-west corner, and the well itself. If you have ten minutes, go straight to the cross-slabs, laid out in a paved area – and time it for autumn if you can, when the low southern sun rakes across the carving and brings the faint lines up out of the stone.
St Mogue’s Cross, the tall granite one near the road, is plain and undecorated rather than a showy ringed cross; its weight is in its age, not its ornament. Worth knowing, too: this St Mogue, of Clonmore, is not St Mogue (Aidan) of Ferns, the bishop he is constantly confused with. Two different saints, one popular name.
The monastery
St Mogue – Maodhóg in Irish – founded his community here in the sixth century, and tradition claims the settlement grew to hold as many as 5,000 monks and scholars, one of the larger religious centres in early Leinster. His feast day is 11 April. Like most Irish monasteries it was raided and burned more than once in the centuries that followed, and the annals record the deaths of a long line of its abbots. An old tradition held that a collection of relics was kept here, including a finger of the saint himself, said to have been left on the condition it never leave Clonmore.
The leaping stone
In 1930 a local man, James Byrne, told the National Folklore Collection how the well began. During a Viking raid, he said, a great stone was blasted out of the monastery and took three leaps across the country. Where it first came down, a spring broke out that cured thousands. Its second landing struck a robber’s castle and loosed swarms of flies that drove the occupants out. The third brought it to rest where it lies now, and there it vowed to stay till the end of time, promising that the land around it would be the most fertile in the parish and that no grass would ever grow over it.
The water had harder work to do as well. School records from 1939 note it was used on sore eyes, warts, skin growths, even cancer: you collected it on three successive Fridays, sometimes pouring it over a bullaun stone before you used it. The rituals have faded, but they were a real part of life here within living memory.
The well and the prayer garden
Two small streams meet at the well and run off to the north-west, feeding a stone-lined basin under a well-house – built, despite the antique look, sometime after 1930. Inside it sits a small bullaun, or wart-stone. Around the well a community-kept prayer garden runs a gravel path over a footbridge, with seating and the sound of the stream; it is a genuinely restful spot, and easy to reach.
A pattern, or pilgrimage, was once held here around 31 January to 1 February, near the feast of St Maodhóg of Ferns – a nod to that saintly name-confusion. It has long since lapsed, but the well is still a quiet place to stop on a walk. Across the road there is a Triple Bullaun Stone in a field by the stream, and Clonmore Castle is a short walk off.
Getting there
Clonmore is in the north-east corner of Carlow, about 6 km south of Hacketstown and 14 km east of Tullow on the R727. Park at the village pub in the centre – there is no dedicated car park at the well – and walk in from the road past the graveyard wall. The path from the road is level but unpaved, so wear something sturdier than trainers after rain.
The site is open all year, day and night, and free. Treat it as the burial ground it is: don’t climb the stonework or lift stones from the well or the bullaun basins, and keep dogs on a lead. Come on a quiet weekday morning and the garden and the crosses are yours.
Further reading
- Site record and photographs: Irish Stones
- The folklore, in full: Dúchas.ie
- For discounts at nearby heritage sites: The Heritage Card