Storied Landscapes
Original music performed at the well by local musicians Noelie McDonnell and William Merrigan. Photo by Anna King. Anna supported the local community in restoring the well in 2019–20.
Storied Landscapes (2021) explored the relationship between ritual sites, music, and communal gathering along the west coast of Ireland. Developed during Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture, the project brought musicians together at a local holy well to reflect on how landscapes carry memory and shared cultural meaning.
This early exploration continues to inform my later projects, including LifeWays and PlaceWays.
The compositions and images gathered here emerge from the richly layered cultural landscape of Ireland’s western seaboard, where wells, fields, and pathways still carry traces of older patterns of gathering and exchange.
The Well GatherinG
This composition was funded by Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture and presented as a short film in April 2021. While the full film is no longer available, an extract of the music - performed by The Whileaways, can be heard above.
The piece was created at The Well of Woodpark in Annaghdown, a site long associated with acts of devotion, healing, and community gathering.
For centuries, holy wells formed part of everyday life in rural Ireland. They were places where people came not only for water, but also for ritual observance, storytelling, and shared experience. Seasonal visits, prayers, and small offerings connected communities to the cycles of land, weather, and belief.
Standing at the well today, the traces of these gatherings remain subtle but palpable. Lichens and stone, worn steps, and the steady movement of water suggest generations who paused here before us
The Well Gathering sought to respond to this layered history through music and place. Rather than reconstructing the past, the work invited a contemporary moment of listening, allowing voices, landscape, and memory to meet within the presence of the well.
In this way, the project reflects a continuing question within my practice: how landscapes hold stories, and how moments of shared attention can briefly bring those stories back into the present.
William Merrigan. Photo by Anna King
