To get here, go down the A82 about four-and-a-half miles south of Tarbet (along the Loch Lomond road). Near a burn coming down the hill is an old house, long in ruin, and near the side of this is an old path – more for deer than city-folk. Go up through the wooded hillside for about a half-mile (amble the trek and make it a nice hour’s walk to get into the place). I’d take the stream itself, as you get more into the nature of the place once you get up the slope: there’s more to see, feel and a healthy water supply en route.
Folklore
This is more of a ‘holy loch’ than a holy well — for obvious reasons. Although it’s not much bigger than a large pond, it is little-known, but has long had the tradition of being an abode of the sith, or faerie-folk. There is, of course, a tendency to find prehistoric remains where the sith have their repute, but there seems little on official records nearby.
Tradition tells that the loch was actually formed in ancient times by locals damming the burn for water supply. Another tells the same in order that a mill could be fed with constant water – though no mill can be found. If this latter tradition is true however, the fairy creature here could have been a brownie – though they are generally more a lowland elemental. One of the reasons the place has been named after the little people is that when certain light falls on it, at the right time of day and year, green triangular shapes emerge from the water formed by deposits hidden beneath the surface (hence the original Gaelic name, Lochan Uaine, or the Green Loch).
Local historian Norman Douglas echoed the folktale described many years earlier by the great John Gregorson Campbell (1900), telling that,
“another story is that the local people would deposit their sheeps’ fleeces in the Fairy Loch overnight, wish for them to be dyed a certain colour, and overnight the fairies would carry out their wish.”
References:
Campbell, John G., Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, James MacLehose: Glasgow 1900.
Stone Circle (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SD 822 387
Also Known as:
Pendle Stone Circle
Archaeology & History
A destroyed site mentioned by several local historians. It was positioned at the valley bottom just below Faughs, a hundred yards west of Lower Moss End, where today it is simply overgrown meadows with the typical excess of Juncus reeds. As local investigator John Dixon said, there are “five stones shown on (the 1848) map just west of Spen Brook Mill.”
In the 1970s, one writer described there being several uprights still in place, but a visit here a few weeks back (though I – unusually! – didn’t walk all through the boggy grounds and explore as extensively as I normally would) found nothing.
Its geomancy, however, was striking. The unnamed hill immediately to the north of its position (at the southern end of the legendary Pendle Hill, a coupla hundred yards west of St. Mary’s church) rises up like a great singular ‘pap’ which, to our old ancestors, was animated with female spirit. I sat here in the pouring rain looking up at this hill and its presence in front of the circle was striking.
…And so I walked onto the top of the said hill. Thereupon I found a small gathering of rocks, not unlike a cairn-spoil. When I enquired with a few local people about the age or nature of this rock-pile, I found no-one seemed aware of its existence. Weird. But from the hill itself, the view is excellent – and the small valley amidst which the old circle once stood teems with legends and myth: of cailleachs, ghosts, wells, witches and more. An excellent spot!
The local writer, historian and walker, John Dixon, sent us the following notes of his exploration here:
“Clifford Byrne, the late Nelson antiquarian, mentions in his book ‘Newchurch in Pendle’ the site of a former stone circle that stood just below Faughs, a hundred yards west of Lower Moss End. Today no large stones of any kind can be located anywhere near this spot, the stones having been removed or broken up some time in the past. However, the 1848 6” OS map records the number and position of these stones as being in two parallel lines about a hundred yards apart lined up west to east. The northerly line (SD 823 389) consists of 3 stones, the southerly (SD 823 387) of 4 stones, all being some 3 yards apart.
“It appears that we have an avenue of stones, not a circle. But why their position in the landscape at the headwaters of two valley streams? The Sabden Brook starts its journey westward to meet with the Calder from the stones, while Dimpenley Clough rises from the stones running east to join Pendle Water – could this be of any significance?”
References:
Byrne, Clifford, Newchurch-in-Pendle: Folklore, Fact, Fancy, Legends and Traditions, Marsden Antiquarians: Nelson 1982.
Cairns (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NT 2447 6828
Archaeology & History
Not far from the giant cup-marked Caiy Stone, there used to be two very large prehistoric cairns, which local historian Daviid Shankie told us “were foolishly broken up by some sacriligious hand and used for road metal”! Not good… Remains of human bones and several fragments of old weapons were found in them. Fred Coles (1903) told us that:
“In the neighbourhood of this [i.e. Morton Hall], but further southwest, on the grounds of Comiston, were found, in forming the public road, under large heaps of stones, various sepulchral stone enclosures, in which were deposited urns with dead men’s ashes, and divers warlike weapons.” And again, when speaking of the levelling of a part of the ground close to the old (so-called Roman) road, by Sir John Clerk of Pennycuick, the same writer adds, there ” were discovered several stone coffins with human bones.”
Folklore
According to Shankie (1902), these two great cairns were built upon lands previously known as the Templelands of Swanston and commemorated a great battle that was fought “between the ancient Picts and Scots.”
Just get to the top of the hill thru the village and where the sharp bend turns, you’ll find one of the monoliths up against the wall above the roadside (hard to find in the undergrowth sometimes!). The other stone is on the eastern side of the road through Lidstone from the A44, halfway into the village itself.
Archaeology & History
Lidstone monolith
There are two small stones to be found in the lovely little hamlet of Lidstone. The main one—Leodwin’s Stone—is at coordinate SP 35517 24656; and the smaller stone further up the hill is at SP 35487 24627. First described in a treatise from 1235 AD as Lidenstan, the great place-name writer Ekwall (1940) thought this derived from ‘Leodwine’s Stone.” A few years later Gelling (1954) told us that “there is a monolith at Lidstone”, which she thought gave rise to the place-name, and not some chap named Leodwine. Whichever it may be, we certainly have two small upright stones here — both worth having a look at if such things take your interest. (Tom Wilson and I included them in our short survey of the standing stones of the region in 1999) Further up at the top of the hill from here are the remains of an old tumulus.
Folklore
Said by Caroline Pumphrey (1990) to be the resting place of old King Lud, one of England’s last great pagan kings; another local writer Elsie Corbett (1962) also told a tale well-known to folklore students about this little monolith. She related how a local man they knew as Mr Hitchcock told them,
“that they used to kid the boys there by telling them that when the stone hears the clock strike twelve it goes down to the stream to drink, and that it was just a ‘catch’ because there was no striking clock in the first place; but it is a ‘catch’ tacked onto some tale that must have been told in the hamlet long ages before there were clocks at all.”
The said stream is a short distance due north of here, down the little valley. The tale may come from it once acting as a shadow-marker, highlighting midday when the sun was high in the sky due south. Makes sense of the folktale anyway!
References:
Bennett, Paul & Wilson, Tom, The Old Stones of Rollright and District, Cockley: London 1999.
Corbett, Elsie, A History of Spelsbury, Cheney & Sons: Banbury 1962.
Ekwall, Eilert, Oxford Dictionary of Place-Names, OUP: Oxford 1940.
Gelling, Margaret, The Place-Names of Oxfordshire – volume 2, Cambridge University Press 1954.
Pumphrey, Caroline, Charlbury of our Childhood, Sessions Books: York 1990.
Go through Haworth and head for the well-known Penistone Hill country park. On the far western side of the hill up near the top of Moorside Lane, there’s a car-park. Right across the road from this there are two footpaths: one heads you into the moor, whilst the other (going the same direction) follows the edge of walling onto the moors. Take this path. Walk on and downhill, past the end of the reservoir, then the path continues uphill. You’ll hit a nice cheery tree beside the path a few hundred yards up. Stop here, look into the boggy region with bits of walling on the moor in front of you. That’s where you’re heading!
Archaeology & History
The first, weaker of the Spa Wells
This was a really curious spot to me, as I found absolutely nothing about the damn place! But thanks to the assistance of local historian and writer Steven Wood (2009), that’s changed. Shown on the 1852 OS-map, at least two springs of clear water trickle slowly from the wet slope above you into the boggy reeds. Close by there are overgrown remains of old buildings, covered with the time of moorland vegetation, seemingly telling that the waters were collected for bathing rooms. But who the hell even started the notion that they’d be able to get Victorian rich-folk up here at the crack-of-dawn to drink or bathe in the waters is seemingly forgotten. And, as is evident from the lack of local history, the project was a failed one which seemed not to have lasted too long.
Folklore
The stronger Spa Well
It was quite obvious that of all the springs around here and despite the strong-flowing streams either side of these spa well, that the local animals drink here more than the other nearby springs of water, as there were literally hundreds of animal tracks all across the boggy ground of the spas.* The waters also seem to have the usual ‘spa’ qualities of stinking, but once we’d cleaned out the overgrown springs — which looked as if they hadn’t been touched for 100 years or more — the waters were clear and tasted good, and were curiously slightly warm!
Although my initial search for information on this site drew a blank, Steve Wood pointed us in the right direction for info on the place. As with many other holy wells and spas in Yorkshire, it turned out that this was another spot much revered around Beltane, indicating strongly there would have been earlier pre-christian rites practiced at this site. Steve pointed me to Martha Heaton’s (2006) local history work, which told:
“For many years the first Sunday in May was a special day. It was known as Spa Sunday, for on this day people gathered up in the hills overlooking what is now Leeshaw Reservoir, here was a well, known as Spa Well, and the stream which now feeds the reservoir is known as Spa Beck. People came from Haworth, Oxenhope, Stanbury, and other villages sitting round the well, they sang songs, some bringing their musical instruments to accompany the singing. Children brought bottles with hard spanish in the bottom filling the bottle with water from the well, shaking it until all the spanish or liquorice had been dissolved. This mixture was known as ‘Poppa Lol’ and would be kept for weeks after a little sugar had been added, then it was used sparingly as medicine. The custom seems to have died out when Bradford Corporation took over the water and made Leeshaw Compensation Reservoir in 1875, though up to about 1930 two men from Haworth would wend their way to the spot on the moor, the first Sunday in May. The men were John Mitchell and Riley Sunderland, better known, in those days as ‘Johnny o’Paul’s’ and ‘Rile Sun’.
It was a great day for many people, the Keighley News of May 1867 mentioned it, the report of local news reads thus: ‘A large assembly met on Spa Sunday on the moors about two miles from Haworth, and a party of musicians from Denholme performed sacred music’.
This locality was often visited during the summer months by the Bronte family.”
References:
Heaton, Martha, Recollections and History of Oxenhope, privately printed 2006.
Wood, Steven & Palmer, Ian, Oxenhope and Stanbury through Time, Amberley Publishing 2009.
Acknowledgements: – Huge thanks to Steven Wood for his help; and to Hazel Holmes for permission to quote from Martha Heaton’s work.
* A common creation myth behind many healing wells is that animals with breaks or illness drag themselves to drink from otherwise small or insignificant springs and wells, despite of the copious streams or rivers which may be nearer.
Follow the same directions to get to the nearby Ponden Kirk and, once on top of the rocks, overlooking the valley, walk on the footpath to your right. It bends round and follows the stream up onto the moors. About 100 yards along, walk up the heathery slope to the right and you’ll find several boggy watering holes on the top of the ridge. In looking at the first OS-map of the area in 1853, it seems that the northernmost of six boggy springs is the Robin Hood’s Well – although we don’t know this for certain. It’s one of them though!
Archaeology & History
Robin Hood’s Spring, above Ponden Kirk
There’s little to see here really: it’s little more than a small boggy spring of water emerging from the edge of the ridge, as the photo shows. Curiously, descriptions of the site (and its neighbouring compatriots, Will Scarlett’s Well and Little John’s Well) are sparse aswell. It was noted by the Ordnance Survey lads in 1848 and subsequently posted on the first OS-map of the area in 1851. Both Horsfall Turner (1879) and Johnnie Gray (1891) mention the site passing, saying nothing of the place. However, several years after Gray’s work, Halliwell Sutcliffe (1899) ventured here and gave us the first real description of the place, telling:
“Half-hidden underground, and fringed with fern and bog-weed, lie the three wells which go by the names of Robin Hood, Little John and Will Scarlett. One may stop to ask how they came by their birth-names, to wonder why a man should have troubled to fashion them in this out-of-the-way spot; but neither speculation nor questioning of the moor folk brings one nearer to an answer.”
Folklore
Halliwell Sutcliffe’s scruffy quick sketch, circa 1898
Apart from this site being a spot where the legendary outlaw stopped and drank in ages past, the healing attributes of these waters have long since been forgotten. Considering the proximity of the Ponden Kirk and its legendary association with fertility and marriage rites, I’d guess that such lore wold have centred around Beltane, or Mayday; and Robin Hood is very well known in folklore to have close associations with the same period. So — and I’m guessing here — it’s likely that whatever might have occurred at this well, would have taken place around Beltane aswell.
References:
Gray, Johnnie, Through Airedale from Goole to Malham, Walker & Laycock: Leeds 1891.
Sutcliffe, Halliwell, By Moor and Fell in West Yorkshire, T. Fisher Unwin: London 1899.
Turner, J. Horsfall, Haworth, Past and Present, Hendon Mill: Nelson 1879.
Destroyed when the M6 motorway was built – but if you’re a really fanatic and wanna see the setting, simply get to the bridge that crosses the M61 north of the town, leading to Birchin Lane and Denham Lane. (To be honest though, if I lived nearby, I’d have to make 100% certain, and have a look in the trees between the west-side of the M6 and the trees at the end of the Wells Close Fold cul-de-sac, just in case its waters are there. If you find anything, let us know!)
Archaeology & History
St Helen’s Well (Taylor 1906)
Highlighted on the very first OS-map of the region in 1848, this was one of many examples of a site dedicated to an important pre-christian deity which was eventually morphed into the character of Saint Helen. Several sites nearby were all named after the saint, including the quarries, a cottage, house and the wells themselves.
When Henry Taylor (1906) came here, he wrote the following about this once important site:
“This celebrated well is situated in a wild, rugged and hilly part of the hundred, in the south of the parish of Brindle… The water, brilliantly clear and sparkling, bubbles up through white sand at the bottom of a stone-lined pit, about seven feet square and four feet deep. On the southerly side of this pit, a few feet from it, is another similar stone-lined pit of about the same size. An old inhabitant tells me that formerly both pits — now nearly empty — were filled to the brim; and this was clearly the case, as an open stone channel is in situ, provided to carry the overflow water from the southernmost pit, the water dropping from it down into the valley. These structures are clearly of considerable antiquity, but the stones are somewhat displaced through neglect. The water now comes underground, through a pipe, into a farmyard about one hundred yards south of the well in a splendid crystal stream. Drinking water appears to be scarce in this district, for we met carts full of barrels which were apparently being taken to the neighbouring villages for sale from this spring.”
Folklore
Local folk visited here and dropped crooked pins into the well in the hope of wishes and future blessings — one report saying such practices were done by local catholics!
References:
Taylor, Henry, The Ancient Crosses and Holy Wells of Lancashire, Sherratt & Hughes: Manchester 1906.
From Carlton, take the western Hirst Road to Temple Hirst village, then turn right once you’re in the village and go up Common Lane up for about a mile. There’s a footpath on your left leading you to the Fair Oaks farmhouse. This was the spot!
Archaeology & History
This is fascinating sounding place which marked the central point of three old township boundaries nearly 1000 years ago. I first found it mentioned in Morrell’s History and Antiquities of Selby (1867: 36-7), where this once famous tree is described in land sale transactions. Morrell told:
“At Carlton the (Selby) abbey had considerable property, which was sold to the neighbouring priory of Drax. The boundary of the property sold was a certain oak tree, called Fair-haia, in Burn Wood, which Adam de Bellaqua gave for this purpose, binding himself and his heirs never to cut it down or root it up, sub poena anathematis.”
But we found a more detailed outline in Dugdale’s Selby Abbey in Yorkshire, where the premises and townships given to Selby Abbey in the 12th and 13th centuries are listed. In the township of ‘Carleton’ (as it was then spelt) Dugdale wrote:
“Peter de Brus gave the grange here, which the monks had held of Agnes, late wife of Ranulph FitzSwain. Richard abbat of Selby granted to Robert prior of Drax all the tithe from the north part of the oak called Fair-haia, in the wood of Birne, or Berlay, through the middle of the marsh to Hundolfsweith; and from thence by the strait ditch directly to Espholm, and all the tithe from Espholme to Appletreholme, as the ditch goes to the new fosse or ditch of Carleton: and the prior granted to the abbat all the tithes on the south to the new ditch, and from thence to the river Ayre. And Adam de Bellaqua gave this oak tree, called Fair-haia, as a boundary, never to be cut down (ad standum in perpetuum et non rescindendum), binding himself and his successors never to cut it down or root it up.”
One wonders: are there any remains left of this once great tree? Has anyone actually transgressed and uprooted it in times past? Is any other lore known of it? And who was Adam de Bellaqua?
One of the most intriguing elements to this site is its name, for the word ‘haia’ literally means ‘god of the land’ — but whether we can take this meaning seriously is questionable, as it’s of Sumerian origin. However, no local dialect words throw any light on the word and it may aswell be the name of the spirit of the tree as anything else. Does anyone know owt more about this place?
A mile east of Waverbridge, turn down the track called Watergates Lonning. Before you reach the bottom, on the left side of the straight track is a spring of water. This is the old holy well.
Archaeology & History
Although much used in bygone times, very little of it can be seen nowadays. When John Musther (2015) wrote about it recently, he told that although it was
“Once known for its copious amount of remarkably pure and sweet water, it is now only a trickle by a tree.”
Nearly three hundred yards away across the fields northeast of this small spring of water, was once seen “a pretty large rock of granite, called St. Cuthbert’s Stone“, whose mythic history will have been intimately tied to the holy well.
Folklore
In the second volume of William Hutchinson’s History of the County of Cumberland (1794), he tells that the St. Cuthbert’s Well,
“is a fine copious spring of remarkably pure and sweet water which…is called Helly-well, i.e. Haly or Holy Well. It formerly was the custom for the youth of all the neighbouring villages to assemble at this well early in the afternoon of the second Sunday in May, and there to join in a variety of rural sports. It was the village wake, and took place here, it is possible, when the keeping of wakes and fairs in the churchyard was discontinued. And it differed from the wakes of later times chiefly in this, that though it was a meeting entirely devoted to festivity and mirth, no strong drink of any kind was ever seen there, nor anything ever drunk but the beverage furnished by the Naiad of the place. A curate of the parish, about twenty years ago (c.1774), on the idea that it was a profanation of the Sabbath, saw fit to set his face against it; and having deservedly great influence in the parish, the meetings at Helly-well have ever since been discontinued.”
References:
Hutchinson, William, The History and Antiquities of the County of Cumberland, volume 2, F. Jollie: Carlisle 1794.
Musther, John, Springs of Living Waters: The Holy Wells of North Cumbria, J.Musther: Keswick 2015.
Dead easy this one! Go along North Street in Keighley, towards the main church in the middle of town (a St. Andrew’s church, previously St. Pete), by the once-infamous Lord Rodney pub, and the old stone edifice stands outside by the Green. The much better Red Pig public house is across the road from here.
Archaeology & History
Keighley’s Town Cross, 1847 – on a painting by Edwin Riby
For a relatively trivial archaeological site, it’s got a bittova history. Not that this is an old site either! We’re not sure just when this cross was made, but it’s certainly no more than 300 years old. Before standing in its present position outside St. Andrew’s Church, sometime before 1840 it was said to have been a few hundred yards away above the present roundabout on Oakworth Road; and one record tells that it originally came from nearby Utley, a mile to the north. Due to lack of decent records, we’re not sure about its early status as a market cross, nor when it was first erected. Indeed, even the steps on which the cross presently stands are clearly more recent than the ones illustrated on Edwin Riby’s 1847 portrait, reproduced here.
Keighley Cross, on a grey wet day!
It would be good to get a complete history of this archaeological relic but it’s difficult with artifacts such as these; and although gaining access to the church now takes less time and effort than it used to (the vicar here used to be quite unhelpful, but has recently changed his ways – which is good!), it’s only open at certain times of the week.* Friday afternoons seem OK to have a look round. Please – if folk begin having trouble gaining access to the Church once more, let us know on here so we can make complaints about it. The Church is paid for by local tax-payer’s cash, and so needs to be open to all of us. Let’s hope this humble ingredient can be maintained for the good of all in this otherwise regressive social community (Keighley, that is…).
There’s also some very curious folklore to be added here in relation to the market and its cross, but its tale is gonna have to wait…
References:
Gray, Johnnie, Through Airedale, from Goole to Malham, Elliott Stock: London 1891.
Keighley, William, Keighley, Past and Present, R. Aked: Keighley 1858.
* There isn’t even a notice giving information, email or phone numbers, telling you who you can contact if you want to know anything about the history of the church, or visit it — which is quite dreadful considering how much money they get paid by tax-payers for their supposed socio-spiritual duties.
