268 
It really looks like a church in a catacomb, or crypt, over which a 
church might have been erected, but over which none appears to have 
been ever intended, for the openings in the roof are a development of 
an original idea of the party who constructed the building. 
Never having visited the churches in the Roman catacombs, I am 
unable to follow out the analogies, if such exist, between this structure 
and those cavities believed to have been used as churches in the Roman 
catacombs ; and, indeed, till the great vault is cleared out, and the vaults 
adjoining it examined, it would be presumptuous to volunteer any opi- 
nion as to the original use of this curious place, which may have been 
one of a class used for ecclesiastical purposes, as two others like it, 
with wells, are said to exist in Dublin. 
It is worthy of notice, that in Jocelyn’s legend there is no remark 
which would enable one to exactly place or find the old or northern well 
of St. Patrick, or, if there was in the original text, his editor in the six- 
teenth century has expunged it. His interests were clearly connected with 
the southern well, and the doings at it; and hence it is probable he 
may have ignored facts, which might explain to us the nature and uses 
of the extraordinary vaulted chamber, near to which the ancient well 
exists, which we would claim as the ancient or original well of St. Pa- 
trick at Ath-cliath, afterwards Oxmantown, and, finally, the northern 
part of the city of Dublin. 
In an economic point of view the author considered the ancient 
well as the exponent of the natural or original supply of pure spring 
water, not only of its immediate neighbourhood, but of the surrounding 
district, probably extending a considerable distance from it, where an 
abundance of spring water exists,—not so pure as that found in Mr. 
Carton’s pump, near this well, which may now be considered the foun- 
tain-head, but pure enough, making allowances for infiltration, &c., as 
to indicate a connexion with it and many pumps in the north side of 
Dublin, which have an abundant supply of water, the quality of which 
appears greatly to depend on the care taken of them, and the extent of 
their usage. 
The notices of the southern well of St. Patrick, in Jocelyn’s legend, 
are of little practical application in an inquiry as to the locality of that 
well, except so far as his notices of the northern well are made by his 
later editor to apply to it, and so ignore the very existence of the other 
well, where we are to infer, in the sixteenth century, little or nothing 
of a public nature occurred to attract attention, nor would it have been 
likely, for at that time those old Irish influences in favour of St. Patrick, 
and his legends, had been lost or ignored in the neighbourhood of St. 
Mary’s Abbey, near whose limits the ancient well in St. George’s-hill 
was situated. 
In the sixteenth century, in its own locality, it may have ceased to 
be known as St. Patrick’s well, or a well dedicated by that Saint to St. 
John the Baptist. There is a tradition in the neighbourhood, that the 
