It doesn’t seem that Drumcree can claim direct links with Saint Patrick. But before we leave the early history, I think it is appropriate to state that a Patrician veneration did develop. In the beginnings of Christianity in Ireland, pagan places of worship such as wells and groves, were blessed and became Monastic and Pilgrimage sites. We may have one of these Pilgrimage sites in Saint Patrick’s Well in Mahon. It is not possible to be sure whether it dates back a long time or whether it developed with the acquisition of a relic of Saint Patrick.

Sarah Buckworth writing in 1687 from Portadown relates that there was a stone at Mahon, near that town, which was called Saint Patrick’s Stone, and here on the 17th March the Catholics of the district assembled to worship the fingernails of Saint Patrick, which were given by Art Edmond Boy Magines to Bryan Roe McCann who buried them there. The Shrine of Saint Patrick’s Hand, the style of which probably dates back to the fifteenth century, was first kept by the Magennis family. This may add to the credulity of the story. Saint Patrick’s Stones were remembered in Mahon in the eighteenth century. There is a reference in 1740 in the will of Meredith Workman of Portadown who desired that he should “be buried behind his malt kin where Saint Patrick’s Stones are placed.” Saint Patrick’s Well, former place of Pilgrimage, survives in a field in front of Mahon’s House.