A Brief History of St. Augustine's Well - Galway Civic Trust

Introduction

First referenced in a pictorial map dated around 1651^i,ii, St. Augustine’s Well is located on the shoreline of Lough Atalia. The well was documented in James Hardiman’s notes in the mid-1800s regarding an “extraordinary cure” which occurred at the site in 1673 and while there is uncertainty as to it is still located in its original site, a well using the name “St. Augustine’s Well” has been preserved along the shoreline and is still in use to this day. This article will go into brief detail on debates as to the location of the well, a miraculous cure which is supposed to have occurred there, and the conservation efforts made in recent years to preserve the location.

The Current Location of the Well

Some disagreement exists as to whether the well currently using the name “St Augustine’s Well” is the original location. With different documents, maps and texts making differing claimsⁱⁱⁱ, this confusion as to the location is in part, a consequence of there having been originally three wells in close proximity to each other. At present, only one well is visitable of the three that initially existed with doubts as to whether St. Augustine’s Well was located in relation to the hills of “Logan’s Map” of 1818^iv,v.

The Cure at the Well

According to James Hardiman’s notes, examinations were conducted of witnesses including both members of the clergy and laypeople of the town which affirm that a “speedy amendment” had happened to then fourteen-year-old boy, Patricke Lynche (/Patrick Lynch) at the well on the 11^th of June in 1673. Faced with a vomiting disease which was believed by physicians of the time to be fatal, Lynche was supposed to have seen the “Lord Jesus Christ and his blessed mother and a multitude of brave winged birdes”^vi,vii. Following on from this, it is said that he drank from the well three times a day for nine days before being cured of the disease. In his notes, he had addressed that the investigative commission established had altered the language to remove the mystical from their investigation. They (the commission) would water down the testimonies of witnesses using words such as “amendment” and “extraodinaire” in the place of testimonies referencing the well being both a “cure” and “miraculous”^viii.

Recent Conservation Efforts

Having been damaged due to strong storms in the winter of 1998, the well was reportedly near lost on the shoreline prior to conservation efforts made by the Galway Civic Trust in 2000 as part of their community employment scheme^ix,x_.

Endnotes
¹ Map of Galway, Hardiman Atlas Ireland, 17th Century (Trinity College Dublin, 1651), https://www.tcd.ie/library/exhibitions/directors-choice/galway/.
² 17th Century Pictorial Map of Galway City (University of Galway, 1651), https://digital.library.universityofgalway.ie/p/ms/asset/17069.
³ Peadar O’Dowd, ‘Holy Wells of Galway City’, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society 60 (2008): 136–53.
⁴ Roddy Mannion, Galway: A Sense of Place (Dublin, Ireland: The Liffey Press, 2012), 12,13.
⁵ O’Dowd, ‘Holy Wells of Galway City’.
⁶ Thos. J. Westropp, ‘A Study of the Folklore on the Coasts of Connacht, Ireland. (Continued)’, Folklore 34, no. 4 (1923): 333–49.
⁷ O’Dowd, ‘Holy Wells of Galway City’.
⁸ Roderic O’Flaherty et al., A Chorographical Description of West or H-Iar Connaught (Dublin : For The Irish Archaeological Society, 1846), 88–90, http://archive.org/details/chorographicalde00ofla.
⁹ Ronnie O’Gorman, ‘St Patrick Passed Us by, but Some Magic Remains…’, Galway Advertiser, 19 March 2009, https://www.advertiser.ie/Galway/article/9791/st-patrick-passed-us-by-but-some-magic-remains.
¹⁰ ‘Projects’, Galway Civic Trust – Dúchas Na Gaillimhe, accessed 3 September 2024, https://galwaycivictrust.ie/index.php/projects/.