What is recorded here

Toberboice Well in Mell, County Louth, carries a brutal tradition: St. Boice drank from its waters immediately before he was beheaded. That final act of thirst turns a quiet country spring into a threshold of suffering, suggesting the water itself witnessed the end of a holy life. The name appeared on maps by 1835, yet concrete sealed the opening by 1967, burying the exact place where human devotion and violence collided.

Marked on the 1835 'OS 6-inch' map as 'Toberboice Well'. There is a tradition that St. Boice drank from this spring before he was beheaded (IFC Schools' Mss 679, 179). It was covered in concrete when inspected by ASI in 1967. Compiled by: Claire Breen Date of upload: 28 August 2012

Linked to St. Boice, the well is associated with the tradition that he drank from the spring before his martyrdom and beheading. St. Boice was a 7th-century Irish saint known for his missionary work in Ulster, and such wells were often sites of pilgrimage and healing in early Christian Ireland.

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