Anatrim, Holy Well, Coolrain, Co. Laois.

Location – Located about 130m N of Anatrim church.  This one is really hard to spot as it is literally a gap in the hedge.  If you don’t know what you’re looking for you will not find it.  You can see the incised stone when the foliage is low in the winter.  In the summer months you will just have to go searching.
OS: S 295 924 (map 54)

Longitude: 7° 33' 38.68" W
Latitude: 52° 58' 53.69" N
GPS: S 29476 92296 (Accuracy: 6m)

Description and History – It is a little hard to find anything to say about this holy well.  It appears to be largely disused and unless you knew it was a holy well you would never know it was there.  Although I’m glad it is not encased in a modern concrete monstrosity I would like to see some kind of maintenance done on this site.  If the council go to the trouble of putting signposts up to this site then they should at least keep it tidy.  It is known as St. Kaban’s Well and is commemorated on 3rd November.  It is lined with dry stone masonry but it can’t be seen because of the undergrowth.  The stone is incised with a circle and two cup marks indicating that it is pre-Christian in origin.  The stone, however, is usually overgrown and you have to peel back the undergrowth to see the incision one the stone.

Difficulty – Easy to get to but hard to spot.  There are some stone steps down into it and it can be slippy when down in the well on the stone. Good luck.

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For more sites in Co. Laois, click here.

This is what the well looks like most of the year.  Completely overgrown.

In the winter it's a little easier to see.  I scrapped what I could away from the stone and you can just make out the incision at the top part of the stone in this shot.

You can clearly see the incision here.  It curves towards it's base.

This shot is a little blurry but you can just make out the cup mark in the middle of the shot.

The slippy steps.