August 17 is the feastday of a Saint John (Eóin) of Saint John’s Point, County Down. Virtually nothing is known of this saint, but I visited the church at the location which bears his name in 2009 while on holiday. It is a charming building right on the coast and has only a few farmhouses and a lighthouse for neighbours. There is both a ‘bullaun’ and a holy well immediately outside the fenced perimeter, as I am pleased to say that Environment and Heritage Service take care of the church ruins. Their sign below shows how the church would have looked originally, it certainly wasn’t designed for large numbers or for large people!

Bullauns are stones with a bowl-shaped depression where water can collect, they are commonly found in Ireland at ecclesiastical sites, and the water in them often used as a cure for headaches. Those who are interested in the New Age line on ‘megaliths’ invest them with a deep significance, but a more prosaic explanation is that they are simply discarded quern stones. This is the bullaun from Saint John’s Point, the step down leads to the well: