Drumcrave community spirit alive and well

Regardless of the impending charges, there is something in the water in Drumcrave that is keeping community spirit in the area alive and well, locals say.

A group of people from the Drumcrave community have set about restoring a 1,000-year-old natural well with the aim of, not only highlighting its heritage, but ultimately having the water drawn from it tested in order to identify what is behind its revitalising qualities.
Water from the well is renowned for its good taste, as well reviving qualities and the tales of thousands of people living nearby drawing from it is testament to that.
Dermot Reilly was one of of a group of five local people who set about clearing-up the previously overgrown well-site at the weekend, an idea which had been in incubation stage for well over a year.
Dermot told The Anglo-Celt he is among the last of a generation who still remember walking to the well, taking water from it and bringing it home. He and the others - Ray Lynch, Dominic Tully, Martin Sexton and the youngest member of the team, Ciaran Reilly, son of Cavan vet Sean Reilly - hope to remind people of the tradition.
After receiving permission from local landowners, the group set about their task last Saturday, Mr Tully’s father, Dominic Sr, providing the restoration team with the age-old knowledge of how to restore a natural water-source back to potable quality.
“I still remember going to the well as a young boy and drawing water from it. I’m among what would be considered the very last generation to have done it. Michael Collins one of the landowners remembers my father taking water from it and there are thousands of stories like that going further back,” Dermot told the Celt.
“There are those who says the well dates back 1,000 years and we feel as a group it’s an important part of the local heritage of the area,” he added.
There’s definitely something in the water too, says Dermot, who along with the other members of the group, believe its unique qualities may be brought about by the fact that it is a naturally rising 'live’ water source.
“There is a bit of science to it too. There is a big difference between 'live’ water and what can be termed as 'dead’ water for want of a better word, water that comes from a bottle or anything like that. 'Live’ water and a live source comes from deep within the earth and because or its origins it brings up a lot of minerals a nutrients with it.”
Having carried out the first clearing of the well, the group are to begin a second decontamination process followed by two more after in the coming weeks and months with the aim then to have water drawn from it and sent to Switzerland to be atomically tested in a laboratory.
“Water emits an electromagnetic frequency that can be measured. With 'live’ water the atoms it’s made up of vibrate at a higher rate and, by sending the water to be tested, we’re hoping to see the level of natural activity the well contains.”
It would, Dermot says, go some way to explaining the impressive age of people in the locality, many of whom would have drank water from the well, have lived to.
“Anyone approaching five decades or more will recall the beautiful drinking water from Drumcrave well. It’s important now because more and more of these wells are falling out of use, which is disappointing. For a lot of communities these would have been their primary drinking water source.
“It’s coincidental this has all come about at the same time the water charges are coming in but our primary aim is to keep the tradition alive and provide the community with a good, clean and natural water source for generations to come,” concludes Dermot.