The location of St. Bridget’s Well and Graveyard in Ardtramon is another local site which is fading from the memory of the community. The well had a long standing in the community for its curing properties however it is used very little now. The well is situated down the lane while the ruins of the old church and graveyard are out in the field to the left hand side. More than likely, the well would have serviced the church and the adjacent tower house with water during its time.   One entering the graveyard you are greeted with a large cut stone water font located on the right hand side of the gate. A lovely story was told to me regarding this font. The past owners of the old Ardtramon House decided to take the font from the site and use it in their farmyard. The story goes, that it took six fine horses to drag the font up to the yard where it was used for water for livestock. A holy woman warned the owners that they would have no luck removing it from its original site and to use it for animals to drink from. Low and behold, many animals started to get sick and die, so the owners decided to take it back to where they got it. However, this time it was pulled by just two asses: ‘it took six horses to pull it up to the house, and two asses to bring it back down’.     One final thing I noticed on my visit to the site was an unusually carved rock. Located at the right hand side of the old church the rock appears to be covered in man made cup-mark carvings or circular dots. This form of pre-historic decoration can be found around Ireland at various sites as well as in Northern England, Scotland, Brittany and Galicia. Similar cup-marked stones are found at various sites in counties Wicklow and Carlow and if this is a genuine cup-mark stone it would identify the site as having Neolithic activity. No-one I spoke to could tell me about it and I could not find any reference to it on any old maps from the area. Anyone with info on this?

St. Bridget’s Well and Graveyard

Ardtramon, Castlebridge, Co. Wexford

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