GUEST BLOG POST Terry Faull’s Can there be a new Holy Well? Lewtrenchard and its holy well

It’s a great pleasure once again to introduce a guest blogger. Terry Faull is a well known Devon based landscape historian, he has researched and investigated the origins of the Christians, in what is now Devon and Cornwall, for many years. His book Secrets of the Hidden Source is an excellent and long overdue look at the Holy Wells in Devon. Highly recommended!

Much holy well research in Britain seems, quite understandably, to concentrate on evidence for the historical origins of  the well. This is done by seeking documentary, place name,local tradition,topographical or religious associations which can help establish a point in time why and when it became “holy”. There is little archaeological evidence to support the still popular view that many holy wells originated as pagan cult sites which were “Christianised”  perhaps by Celtic Saints or the later church of Augustine of Canterbury. However, votive offerings found at many early water cult sites do demonstrate the significance of some primary water sources to pagan people and the proximity of many wells to church buildings is evidence of their onetime importance to  Christians. The medieval church sought to exercise control over popular spirituality and many  celebrated  holy wells can trace their development from a time when the church acted to demonstrate its authority with a willingness to benefit from gifts left by pious pilgrims.

I suggest that above all, a holy well must have its heart, a belief ancient or modern, that here is to be found something “other”, a sense of place or feeling which, for some at least, provides a possibility of experience beyond the everyday. Perhaps the apocryphal Celtic “Thin Place between this world and the Other world” is after all the best description we can offer.

Many spiritual ideologies  accept the concept of continuing revelation and  provide one possible underpinning for identification of a holy well which does nor rely only on historical authenticity. I am fortunate to live quite close to such a place-the holy well at Lewtrenchard in Devon. In 1830 the curate there wrote in the parish register  “the holy well behind the church has been re-erected and formerly its water was used for the font”. Some 80 years later, just before the outbreak of the First World War,  the antiquarian vicar Sabine Baring-Gould  developed a pleasure garden around the well site and he rebuilt the wellhouse. This was part of a plan to help restore the health of his crippled wife by encouraging her to walk in the fresh air. Baring -Gould had a great interest in holy wells and  his diaries record  visits to a number including to the well and church at St Clether where he gave money for the restoration of the  buildings.

Much holy well research in Britain seems, quite understandably, to concentrate on evidence for the historical origins of  the well. This is done by seeking documentary, place name,local tradition,topographical or religious associations which can help establish a point in time why and when it became “holy”. There is little archaeological evidence to support the still popular view that many holy wells originated as pagan cult sites which were “Christianised”  perhaps by Celtic Saints or the later church of Augustine of Canterbury. However, votive offerings found at many early water cult sites do demonstrate the significance of some primary water sources to pagan people and the proximity of many wells to church buildings is evidence of their onetime importance to  Christians. The medieval church sought to exercise control over popular spirituality and many  celebrated  holy wells can trace their development from a time when the church acted to demonstrate its authority with a willingness to benefit from gifts left by pious pilgrims.

Baring-Gould knew that the identity of the original patron saint of his own church at Lewtrenchard was unknown and he believed it may have orginally been dedicated to that foremost of West Country saints, St.Petroc. Some credence to this view arises from the fact that since at least 1261, Petroc has been the patron saint of the church of  nearby Lydford which had been one of the frontier burghs established by King Alfred. In 1928, soon after Baring-Gould’s death, his ornate structure  by then called St. Petroc’s well, was  moved  to form a centre piece of an ornamental garden at the vicarage; it is this wellhouse in a garden setting which is an English Heritage listed building.

The  original location of the well and its surrounding garden behind the church were forgotten and then lost.  In recent years, through a process of exploration, dowsing and research, the site  has  been rediscovered and it now forms a focus of a woodland walk around Baring- Gould’s forgotten pleasure garden. In 2013 a new wellhouse was erected on what were believed to be the original foundations.

What makes a water source a  “holy well” is a matter of ongoing debate and interpretation. However I have no qualms in agreeing with Baring-Gould, that at Lewtrenchard there is indeed  a holy well; this relies not on any  established ancient origin but on the sense of the place itself. The full story can be found at http://www.forgottengarden.co.uk     If you are ever close by, do please visit our “new” Holy Well.

Terry’s excellent book is still available through Amazon although his website is in archive form it is still available here

http://web.archive.org/web/20090627181846/http://holywells.com/index.html

 

Terry Faull August 2014

The veneration of water in 12 objects…number 10 Cursing tablets

“Solinus to the goddess Sulis Minerva. I give to your divinity and majesty [my] bathing tunic and cloak. Do not allow sleep or health to him who has done me wrong, whether man or woman or whether slave or free unless he reveals himself and brings those goods to your temple.”

So translates a thin lead rectangular sheet one of 130 found in 1979-80 in the hot spring at Bath, deposited in the shrine of Sulis Minerva, the Goddess of the spring.  Theses so called curse tablets were written with a stylus in a cursive script and then rolled up with the writing innermost. Sometimes these sheets are nailed interestingly the word defixio being translated into fasten and curse! Sometimes the words are written backwards or lines written in alternating directions called asboustrophedon in Greek.

Cursing tablets http://bathsbloggers.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/curses-condensed.html

Interestingly, all bar one of the 130 concerned curses to do with stolen goods, so called ‘prayers for justice’. Thefts from Roman baths appeared to be a common problem and goods from gemstones, jewellery to clothing were stolen. Often the ‘victim’ was the perpetrator of a crime and the curse would range from sleep deprivation to death. For example:

“To the goddess Sulis Minerva. I ask your most sacred majesty that you take vengeance on those who have done [me] wrong, that you permit them neither sleep…”

Sometimes the curse would be more detailed in its instruction:

“Docilianus [son] of Brucerus to the most holy goddess Sulis. I curse him who has stolen my hooded cloak, whether man or woman, whether slave or free, that .. the goddess Sulis inflict death upon .. and not allow him sleep or children now and in the future, until he has brought my hooded cloak to the temple of her divinity.”

Another:

“ To Minerva the goddess Sulis I have given the thief who has stolen my hooded cloak, whether slave or free, whether man or woman.  He is not to buy back this gift unless with his own blood.”

This named the culprits:

“I have given to the goddess Sulis the six silver coins which I have lost. It is for the goddess to exact [them] from the names written below: Senicianus and Saturninus and Anniola,”

Another noted:

“Whether pagan or Christian, whether man or woman, whether boy or girl, whether slave or free whoever has stolen from me, Annianus [son of] Matutina (?), six silver coins from my purse, you, Lady Goddess, are to exact [them] from him. If through some deceit he has given me…and do not give thus to him but reckon as (?) the blood of him who has invoked his upon me.”

So curses appeared a little extreme considering:

“Docimedis has lost two gloves and asks that the thief responsible should lose their minds [sic] and eyes in the goddess’ temple.”

The inscriptions follow a general formula, suggesting perhaps that there was a commercial scribe more than probable as many people were illiterate around that time. The formula was as follows the stolen property was declared and transferred to the deity so it becomes their loss, the suspect and victim are named and then the later asks for punishment to induce the theft back. The language is interesting being in Latin lettering but in a Romano-British hybrid, some argue some may be Celtic. The tablets are on show in the excellent Roman Bath museum for all to wonder at this curious custom.

The Devil is in the detail….The Devil’s Whispering Well Bishop Lydeard

My attention was first brought to this curiously named well in Janet and Colin Bord’s excellent Sacred Waters, then I traced the quote to Ruth Tongue’s 1965 Somerset Folklore. However neither sources gave any idea of whether it was extant but both state it was near the church (of course Tongue’s work is the original source no doubt). A few years later I found myself in Bishop’s Lydeard and thought I’d look for it. I found the church and in a lane nearby I found a fish and chip shop. I asked there and they said although they had never heard of the well, there was a well down the lane. A few yards down and there it was. An elderly lady was walking past as I peered in and I asked her if she knew the name of the well..”Devil’s whispering well” she replied.

But why the Devil?

One theory underlined by the name is that one could commune with Old Nick. And the structure could lend support to this bizarre usage. The well is a red brick structure with an arched entrance, but oddly with the well’s basin is to the side of the structure rather being face on like most wells, so we could whisper? But why whisper to the Devil? One possible reason is that the well is a cursing well. As a cursing well it would not be unique countrywide. Indeed, the most well documented site is less than 100 miles away at Bath. But are the two connected? Bath’s reputation comes from the discovery of a hoard of cursing tablets There appease to be no evidence of a Roman connection to the settlement that I am aware of, but then again the other well known site St Elian’s Well in Llanelian similarly does not have a Roman connection.

Walling in the Devil Is it possible that the cursing aspect is a confused red herring? This is suggested by another possible original is recorded in an article in the Local Notes and Queries of the Somerset Herald of the 31^st August 1935:

“Walling in the Devil at Bishop’s Lydeard – many years ago, when I was a child , I remember hearing my grandmother say that the Devil kept appearing near a well at Bishop’s Lydeard, where some men were building. They were very frightened and went to the clergyman and asked him what to do. He promised to go with them when they thought he would appear again and he did so. When Satan appeared in the form of an ordinary man, but with a cloven hoof, the clergy man approached and said ‘In the name of the father, the son and the Holy Ghost, why troublest thou me?’ and he gradually disappeared and the clergy man told the workman to ’wall him in’. So they built round the place, and he disappeared forever. I have always had the impression it was somewhere along the wall opposite Lydeard House. I wonder if anyone else had heard of it? I know my grandmother used to say they walled in the Devil at Bishop’s Lydeard – H”

What does this legend mean? Was it that the Devil was walled up and that’s why you could whisper to him? A reply came a month later and printed in the 28^th September edition, where an Isabel Wyatt suggests

“One or two features of this legend suggest the interesting possibility that it may originally have had quite a different significance from the one which we read into now. In the middle ages a person walled into masonary while still alive was one of the punishments for witchcraft; thus in 1222 an old woman and a young man was accused of witchcraft were sentenced by Stephen Langton, then Archbishop of Canterbury, to be plastered alive into a wall.”

She goes on to suggest that the Devil is not the real Devil, but a human devil who was the chief of each witches coven. Witches are associated with other wells in the county, indeed not that far away at Parlestone Common on the Quantocks. This makes some sort of sense as witchcraft is strong in the region. Is it possible that the head of a coven was walled up in the well and members of the surviving coven would visit them and whisper to them? Or is the walling up part of another legend as the first correspondent suggests. Perhaps the well was a well associated with the witches. This might explain why the well was never Christianised despite close proximity to the church. Perhaps this well was their ritual well, a pagan well escaping rededication despite the proximity of the church. What do we make of Palmer (1975) who details in his Folklore of Somerset that Snell (1903) give details from Thornton’s Reminiscences of an old West County Countryman tells of a black dog in the village?

The Devil in the Well…The Monk’s Well Wavertree

“ Qui non dat quod habet, Dæmon infra vide 1414.”

“He who here does nought bestow, The Devil laughs at him below”.

So reads the inscription on the Monk’s Well, a very surprising survival of an ancient well in the urban sprawl of Liverpool. The well consists of a sandstone structure surmounted by a cross. The well although dry and the pipe very worn,  it has been converted into a flower bed, which has probably hidden the steps down under the arch to the water.

The name Monk’s Well derives according to Moss’s Liverpool Guide (1796) because there was:

 “an old monastic looking house…inhabited by some religious order, who might thus request alms towards their support”.

The 1768 Wavertree Enclosure Act notes that the owner of Lake House was annoyed that villagers were crossing his land to reach the water and such that a:

“through tunnel, channel or stone gutter, lately laid and made … to carry and convey water from the said well or basin into another … lately also made, erected and built, in the highway or road adjoining”.

This improvement may have lead to the local belief of secret tunnels, significantly leading to Childwall Abbey or Priory. The name is significant of course ‘child’ probably deriving from Old Norse keld for spring and may have been an earlier name for the spring.

Baines’s 1825 Lancashire Directory of 1825 states that:

“Here is a well at which charitable contributions were anciently collected, bearing the following monkish inscription in antique letters.”

Of that legend it was a belief locally that all visitors should on taking its waters, give alms. If they did not the Devil who was chained to the bottom of the well laughed and presumably some misfortune befell the person although that is not stated. The well was also said to be a pin well so perhaps pins were given as an alm once the monks moved away?

Interestingly, when Hope (1893) with his Legendary lore of holy wells visited not only was the cross lost, but only the following inscription was visible ‘Deus dedit, homo bibit’. Which means ‘God gives and man drinks’.  This was apparently, was added at that time and can be seen above the original inscription.

A pump was installed in 1835 by the Select Vestry and they also ordered the constable to lock it up during church services on Sundays so that gossiping women would not visit the well instead. When piped water arrived in the 1850s the well fell into disuse. The site was at risk when a local building firm demolished nearby Monkswell House but happily its importance was recognised and it did not disappear under some semis! In 1952, the  structure became one of the first of Liverpool’s Listed ‘Buildings’ and is easily found following the road which leads off to the left near the old lock up ( itself worth a visit and another remarkable survival ) off the B1578 road out of Liverpool. Turn the corner from North Drive into Mill Lane and you will see it.