St. Patricks Well — Unknown Townland

Annotated 'St. Patrick's Well' on the 1837 ed. OSi 6-inch map and on the 1863 ed. OSi 25-inch map. This holy well also known as the 'southern well of St. Patrick', is still visible in the Provosts garden of Trinity College, directly W of the main entrance to the college at Nassau Street which was called 'St Patrick's Well-Lane' or Sráid Thobar Phádraig (Patrick's Well Street) (Gilbert 1861, III, 247). St Patrick's Well (fontem Sancti Patricii) is a natural spring which marked the S boundary of the dissolved monastery of All Hallows (DU018-020044-) in a 1592 deed which outlined the extent of the ground given to Trinity College by the City of Dublin (ibid.; Butler 1845, 94). In the late 16th-century the following details about this well was recorded; 'on the east part [of the suburbs of the city] they have Saint Patrick's Well, the water whereof, although it be generally reported to be very hot, yet the very prime of the perfection is upon the 17th of March, which is Saint Patrick's Day; and upon this day the water is more holy than it is all the year after, or else the inhabitants of Dublin are more foolish upon that day then they be all the year after, for upon that day thither they will run by heaps, men, women, and children, and there, first performing certain superstitious ceremonies, they drink of the water; and when they are returned to their own homes, for nine daies after, they will sit and tell what wonderful things have been wrought by the operation of the water of Saint Patrick's Well' (ibid., 245). In 1610 Barnaby Rich wrote following about this well; 'on the East part, they have St. Patricks Well, the water whereof, although it be generally reputed to bee very hot, yet the very prime of the perfection, is upon the 17th of March, which is St. Patricks day, and upon this day, the water is more holy then it is all the yeare after, or else the Inhabitants of Dublin are more foolish upon that day, then they be al the yeare after. For upon that day thither they will run by heapes, men, women, and children, and there, first performing certain superstitious ceremonies, they drinke of the water; and when they are returned to their owne homes, for nine daies after, they will sit and tell, what wonderfull thinges have bin wrought by the operation of the water of St. Patricks Well' (Rich 1610, 52). Two years later in 1612, Patrick Playne, a student of Trinity College wrote; 'But let me draw somewhat near to your College itself: are you not eye-witnesses how every 17th of March what flocking there is of men, women, and children to that same holy sanctified pool, Saint Patrick's Well. I hope you do not think the whole multitude that do so yearly frequent the place to be stark mad, to come running thither so thick, if they did not find some sanctity in the water?' (ibid.). The sudden drying up of this well in 1729 formed the subject of a poem by Swift. Clibborn (1860, 24-5) recorded the following details about this well; 'in 1731 they [Dublin Corporation] made what appears to have been almost an abortive attempt in restoring a great supply of spring water to the south side of the city, which must have previously existed, from a spring well, in or near Nassau street, then, and for five or six hundred years before, called the southern Well of St. Patrick. This well must have yielded previously a most wonderful and extraordinary supply of water to the permanent residents in its neighbourhood, and also to the whole population of Dublin and its environs, who on the 17th of March in every year used its water. The drying up of this well before 1731 indicated that the water had found a different course to the sea. It is to the date of the loss of water in the old southern Well of St. Patrick that we should, at the earliest, place the dates of the oldest of the more or less deep wells in Nassau-street for, antecedently to 1728, people would have preferred getting water from the old well itself. The enormous quantity of spring-well water which has existed in the College Park and its neighbourhood or which still exists, is a fact confirmatory of those statements as to the great original supply of water to the old Well of St. Patrick in St Patrick's well-lane, or Nassau-street and Leinster-street considered as one street. The Corporation were not gifted with miraculous powers, and could not bring the water back, which somehow went lower down the street, towards Leinster-street and that neighbourhood: so that the old Well of St. Patrick before Dr. Rutty's time (1756), somewhere in Nassau-street, or St. Patrick's-well-lane was almost forgotten, or of such little worth, that this gentleman (who took much pains to hunt ancient wells in Dublin) does not appear to have been able to find its remains out; for he speaks of its neighbours only, and not of itself, except from hearsay. This Well of St. Patrick appear to have been, in the good old times, as many people like to call them, the occasion of great and excessive water-drinking on the 17th of March, or St Patrick's Day, in every year. The Primate of Armagh attended at St. Patrick's Well, and no doubt, with all his attendants, drank a glass of its water to the memory of the saint, and to the permanency of its water, and the ancient usage of the citizens of Dublin of paying a tribute or rent to the Bishop of Armagh, as it were for the usage of this water, for ever- but somehow it failed at the well, and has ever since been supplied, in or rather near its original locality, by a very short allowance indeed. The old ceremonial at the Well of St. Patrick appears to have died out at the Reformation I find no notice of it after that event; when a very different spirit, perfectly antagonistic to that which would have kept up the old ceremonial, very strongly developed itself in this neighbourhood, when the very tradition or memory of the Well of St. Patrick and the doings at it were bid in the names of Nassau-street and Leinster-street. No doubt the demonstrations at the Well on St. Patrick's Day had been taken advantage of by the Irish people to exhibit Irish and anti-English feelings; and so it may have been, that the corporation of Dublin, under Elizabeth and her successors, by one regulation or another, gradually put the old Well of St. Patrick - much fallen off in its supply of water-altogether, out of use; while its use, or that of its water rather, may have been left unutilized, from a disposition to realize money by the sale of the city water. The useful character of the water is still to some extent indicated by the fact, that the right of drawing water from a spring well behind the house, No. 15, Nassau-street,-and which well was believed to be the almost extinct Well of St. Patrick,- was nevertheless secured to the people of the adjoining premises, in their lease from Simpson's Hospital, as a valuable privilege. In the Simpson's Hospital lease this well is called St. Patrick's Well, as if there was no question about its identity as such; but other wells in its immediate neighbourhood make similar claims, so it is a vexatious question to settle, which, if any, of the existing wells in or near Nassau-street, is the original southern Well of St. Patrick, shorn of its ancient prestige, and with but a trace of its original supply of water. After taking into account all the evidence he could collect on this matter, the author has come to the conclusion, that the well behind the house, No. 9, Nassau-street, and which is close to a lane leading from Nassau-street to Frederick-lane, South, has most pretensions to the honour of having been the old Well of St. Patrick. The drainage operations above noticed prove that the College waters are all somehow connected together; for the water of the well in the hole in the wall, opposite Dawson street, and considered by Mr. Gilbert as the old southern Well of St. Patrick, was lowered, and so it may have been the levels of all the wells near it, including the great well in