Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
St Patrick's well..Nassau St
Options
-
08-07-2009 5:03pm#1
Comments
-
Moderators, Category Moderators, Music Moderators, Regional East Moderators, Regional Midlands Moderators, Regional Midwest Moderators, Regional Abroad Moderators, Regional North Mods, Regional West Moderators, Regional South East Moderators, Regional North East Moderators, Regional North West Moderators, Regional South Moderators Posts: 8,022 CMod ✭✭✭✭
Join Date:Posts: 7298
0 -
-
-
-
Looks great. I'd known about the well, but wasn't aware it still existed!
Did you get down any further? Looks like a great place.admiralofthefleet wrote: »the amount of orbs in the second pic, spooky
Dust illuminated by the flash and appearing out of focus in the lens
0 -
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
Here's an article i dug out about the well:This article was published in Trinity News on January 27, 2009, with the headline 'A dry well, if not a dry Commons', the seventh of the 'Old Trinity' columns.
Trinity’s holy well
LOOKING THROUGH the railings at the entrance to college on Nassau Street one can see, below street level, what looks like a gated doorway leading under the road. This is St Patrick’s Well, Trinity College’s own “holy well”. Holy wells – outdoor centres of popular piety – were hugely popular in Ireland in previous centuries, and St Patrick’s Well was once frequented by large crowds on March 17th.
Nassau Street itself was called St Patrick’s Well Lane until it was renamed (after the royal house of Nassau) in the 1700s. The name in Irish continues to be Sráid Thobar Phádraig, as street signs attest.
The oldest mention of a well in the area is in a 12th century Life of St Patrick. The author refers to a “fountain of St Patrick” existing in Dublin. The Life says that St Patrick, in the manner of Moses in Exodus, struck a rock with his staff. The rock then “flowed forth abundant waters”.
In 1592, when Trinity College was founded, the description of property granted to the new college defined the southern border as “the lane that leads to St Patrick’s Well to the south of the monastery”.
It was around this time that the St Patrick’s Well’s popularity among Dubliners was at its height, and a dismissive English writer in around 1610 left us an account of devotions at the well. On St Patrick’s Day, he wrote, “the water is more holy than it is all the year after, or else the inhabitants of Dublin are more foolish upon this day than they be all the year after.” On that day, he wrote, “thither they will run by heaps, men, women and children, and there, first performing certain superstitious ceremonies, they drink of the water”.
At the end of that century, a story goes, frogs were introduced to Ireland at St Patrick’s Well. A doctor, “a very good protestant ... to show his zeal against popery”, allegedly brought frog spawn from Liverpool and deposited it in the well.
In 1729 the well ran dry, inspiring Jonathan Swift to write his satirical poem On the sudden drying up of St Patrick’s Well, near Trinity College, Dublin. “Here, from the neighbouring nursery of arts/The students, drinking, raised their wit and parts” he wrote. Public pressure led Dublin Corporation to restore the flow of water to the well two years later.
While the opening underneath the Nassau Street entrance currently claims the title of St Patrick’s Well, and has done so for quite some time, it is unlikely to be very same well which has such an interesting history. Several sites along Nassau Street have claimed to be the well of pilgrimage of 400 years ago, with that at the Arts Building entrance being the latest. Early Dublin maps place St Patrick’s Well nearer to what is now Lincoln Place.
The renovation of the Provost’s House Stables has led to increased and easier access to the well, and a new publication, The Provost’s House Stables: Building and Environs, contains an excellent investigation into the history of the well by Dr Rachel Moss.
0 -
The vaulting at the front of the well is modern(circa 1970) and is made out of concrete but further in is georgian(or possibly older) brickwork that forms an arch over the shrine itself,which i beleive is made from stone.
If you look to he bottom left of the pics you can see a sort of step
downwards,the well itself is left of this step and from what i can gather its a rectangular pool and quite deep.
I'm going to get the key to it and head inside then i can get some shots of the water.
In regard to an underground river,there's certainly one that flows under the college and right underneath the 1937 Reading Room.
During particulary high tides the water from the liffey can back up along its course and has caused flooding in the basement of the reading room.
There's a pump installed in the floor that drains a pool about two feet across.This would appear to be roughly in line with the location of the well and maybe 20 yards away.
I dont know if anybody can help but the story goes that a carved stone slab was found in the well and now residedes in St patrick's Cathedral..
That river sounds bang on for the Stein. It runs down under South Great Georges Street and then veers towards Dame Lane and towards College Green. I encountered it during a visit to an excavation in Georges Street
!
That slab is in St Patricks as far as I remember.0 -
That river sounds bang on for the Stein. It runs down under South Great Georges Street and then veers towards Dame Lane and towards College Green. I encountered it during a visit to an excavation in Georges Street!
That slab is in St Patricks as far as I remember.
I thought the stein ran down under grafton street.
(and according to the map, tis the Poddle under South Great Georges Street.)0 -
heres map of trinity ground water
http://www.tcd.ie/Buildings/projectsmetro.php
which entrance do you mean, near the dentists end or kilkenny design shop crosswalk entrance0 -
-
GerardKeating wrote: »I thought the stein ran down under grafton street.
(and according to the map, tis the Poddle under South Great Georges Street.)
The poddle, as far as I know, doesn't run down Georges Street. I was always told it was the Stein but hey, archaeologists are not always right!! And consultants do get it wrong by times too. 0 -
The poddle, as far as I know, doesn't run down Georges Street. I was always told it was the Stein but hey, archaeologists are not always right!! And consultants do get it wrong by times too.
Speaking of archeologists..there's a bunch of them examining St patrick's well on wednesday.
I'm gonna bring the camera down and see if they let me have a bit of a nosey.0 -
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
... and I am a bit stumped for a cut-off point.... 
Advertisement