So when you show up in county Claire, first off, it's in the middle of nowhere.

It's like in fields, like sheep or next door and you show up and you kind of aren't that

impressed at first because it's just like this, it's a statue in a glass case and you're

like, oh, okay.

And it's only then when you start getting closer that you see this little, hidey hole entrance

to the left.

And if you go inside, it's this dark, musty cave and it smells kind of like that decaying

papery smell and there's water dripping.

The walls are covered in different memorabilia, there's cards, there's funeral cards, there's

casts that people have left behind.

And then as you go deeper into this tunnel-like cave, it starts to turn and then you get to

the very end of the cave and the memorabilia sort of stops.

And then all you see is this stone wall and there's a skylight above it and water dripping

in from the stone wall, coming out of the wall and collecting in this little pool.

When you're there, it feels like something that's been there for a very, very, very long

time.

I'm Sarah Dern and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible

and wondrous places.

I'm an editorial fellow at Atlas Obscura and today I'm taking you to St.

Bridgeswell in County Claire, Ireland, where we'll explore the story of how a pagan goddess

became a Christian saint, that's after this.

Did you know anything about this place going into it or was this completely sort of going

...