The mysterious Powdonnet Well, Cumbria

Powdonnet Well is a curious site, a large clear and deep pool lined by a wall of rocks, full of spring water beside a fast flowing stream and cloaked in the shadow of a copse of trees marked by a modern monolith which records its name, the relic of a Millennium cleaning up, although other sources suggest 1995! It is an evocative site, but its history is challenging.

The pool lays on the edge of the small settlement of Morland. The church it is claimed lays upon a pagan site and boasted a shrine within. The relics of St Laurence were laid in 666AD in a stone altar within giving the Saxon church a religious focus. This was apparently lost at the Reformation but local tradition records that it was buried somewhere in the churchyard.

Powdonnet derives from the Irish-Gaelic “pow’ meaning pool and donnet referring to a saint called Donat meaning the ‘Pool of St Donat’. Smith in his Place-names of Westmorland 1967 cites that the earliest form was in 1637 as Powdonet and is not mentioned as Powdonnet Well until 1859.

 

Who was St Donat?

St Donat was a little known French saint and there are dedications to him in Wales such as  St Donats castle,in Glamorgan the church guide referring to:

“The church (St Donats) had originally been dedicated to the Welsh, St.Gwerydd, but in Norman times the dedication had been changed to St. Donat, or St. Dunwydd, as it is written in Welsh.

He was a ninth-century saint who is said to have been born in Ireland and who later became Bishop of Florence. For a long time he was very popular on the north coast of France as a patron saint of sailors.”

But how is this saint associated with a spring in Cumbria? This is particularly problematic as there are no local churches so dedicated nearby and the church does not share its dedication. However, it is possible that it records a Celtic dedication lost to the Anglo-Saxon expansion; the last relic of the saint’s association locally. Certainly, it is a primitive site one might well expect associate with the early baptism of a Celtic evangelist. Was this St Donat? What is more remarkable is that unlike many other well sites which have been enclosed in brick and stone, this site retains what it must have been like back in those early years.