St Declan’s Day at Ardmore

On St Declan’s feast, 24 July, crowds gathered at Ardmore, where the saint founded his church. In 1826 several thousand came, with whiskey tents in rows along the strand, and over eleven hundred people squeezed one by one under St Declan’s Stone, a rock on the beach resting on two others, hoping to cure or keep off pains in the back. The stone was said to have floated from Rome carrying a bell and vestments for the saint. The pilgrims then drank and washed at his holy well and carried away earth from his grave. The pattern is still kept at Ardmore every year.