The Well Gathering: Woodpark, Annaghdown
Local musicians Noelie McDonnell and William Merrigan. All photos by Anna King, who supported the community in restoring the well in 2019–20
The Well GatherinG: Woodpark, Annaghdown
The Well Gathering, funded by Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture, was developed by Dr. Anna King in collaboration with musicians, storytellers, and members of the Annaghdown community.
Presented as a short film in April 2021, the project involved a series of storytelling sessions and a gathering at a local well, where participants reflected on how landscapes carry memory and shared cultural meaning through time.
While the full film is no longer available, an extract of the music performed by The Whileaways can be heard below. This work remains as an early exploration into wells as communal sites.
Woodpark Well in Annaghdown is a piece of living architectural heritage. It provided water to households in the area, and served as a focal point for celebration and communal gathering.
This film re-enacts that tradition through original music performed at the well by local musicians Noelie McDonnell (of The Whileaways) and William Merrigan. Their performance formed part of the unveiling of a unique installation of landscape paintings, placed within the very landscape that had inspired them in 1975.
The project also involved gathering firsthand memories of life around the well through a series of storytelling sessions held at Woodpark Well between September 2020 and April 2021.
Among those who shared their stories was 93-year-old local historian Tom Concannon, who holds a rare gift for conveying the lived experience of village life. His accounts of past gatherings at the well reminded us how much of history travels through voice and memory.
For centuries, wells in Annaghdown and the surrounding landscape were woven into everyday life. They were places for ritual observance, storytelling, and shared experience, where seasonal visits, prayers, and small offerings connected communities to the cycles of land, weather, and belief.
Standing at the well today, traces of those gatherings remain subtle but palpable. Lichens on stone, worn steps, and the steady movement of water speak of generations who paused here before us.
The Well Gathering re-animates this layered history through music, voice, and relationship to place.
This work reflects a continuing question explored throughout Anna King’s practice: how landscapes hold stories, and how moments of shared gathering can bring those stories into the present, keeping them alive and meaningful for new generations.
Rooted in her 2014 PhD arts-based ethnographic research on heritage and place-based encounters, this enquiry continues through projects including: PlaceWays, LifeWays, and The Cherry Blossom Tales.
William Merrigan. Photo by Anna King
Originally developed as part of Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture - Small Towns, Big Ideas Project. Presentation took place in 2021 following COVID-19 delays.
Music by The Whileaways