Turn off the A91 road at Gateside and go down Station Road, crossing the old railway line at the bottom. From here, cross the fields to your left and the site of the circle will be found in the field to the north east of Easter Nether Urquhart Farm.
Archaeology & History
Marked on the 1856 6″ Ordnance Survey map as a “standing stone,” earlier references record this as being the survivor of a stone circle. Not listed in Aubrey Burl’s (2000) magnum opus, this circle was on the edge of the site of a major battle between the Romans and the native defenders, and large amounts of human remains have been found in the vicinity. Referring to an adjacent cairn, Lieutenant-Colonel Miller wrote in 1829:
“A very fine Druid’s Temple stood on the south side of it, consisting of seven very large stones. All these were blasted with powder and removed, except half the one of them, which still marks the spot.”
Of the same cairn, the Reverend Andrew Small wrote in 1823:
“This cairn stood a little north of an ancient Druids’ temple, only one stone now remaining, out of ten of which it formerly consisted.”
The Ordnance Survey Name Book for 1853-55 imparts the following:
“This standing Stone is about 13 chains on the South side of the River Eden opposite Edensbank but whether it is the remains of a druid’s temple or set up to mark something relative to the battle contested between the Romans and Caledonians according to Messrs. Miller & Small, it is difficult to determine. It stands about 4 feet 10 inches high and its sides are about 2 feet broad…many of the inhabitants consider it to have been a druid’s temple…”
A close-up of the sitePosition of the circle, evident in crop-growth
J.S. Baird of Nether Urquhart informed an Ordnance Survey officer in 1956 that the remaining stone was broken up and removed around 1952, and measured 5 feet high with a girth of 9 feet at the base. Near the top of the stone, on the south-side were two slight cracks weathered to suggest a simple incised cross.
On the day of my November field-visit the winter barley was sprouting and it was interesting to see how much better it was growing at the place where the remaining stone had stood.
Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2000.
Miller, Lieutenant-Colonel, “An Inquiry respecting the site of the battle of Mons Grampius (Read 27th April 1829 and 25th January 1830),” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Volume IV, 1857.
Small, Reverend Andrew, Interesting Roman Antiquities Recently Discovered in Fife Ascertaining the site of the Great Battle fought betwixt Agricola and Galgacus, John Anderson & Co: Edinburgh 1823.
Take the directions to the hugely impressive Dunruchan A standing stone. Walk directly south, over the gate and follow the fence straight down the fields, crossing the burn at the very bottom. Walk over the boggy grassland and start veering uphill, southeast. You’ll notice the land goes up in geological ‘steps’ and, a few hundred yards up, a small standing stone pokes up on the near skyline ahead of you. Head straight for it!
Archaeology & History
This small standing stone was first noted after a quick visit to the major Dunruchan megalithic complex in the summer of 2016. Photographer James Elkington was taking images of the landscape and the standing stones when he noticed a stone on the horizon a half-mile away. As we were in a rush, he took a couple of photos from different angles on the way back to the car—both of which looked promising. And so, several months later, we revisited the site again. Lisa, Paul and Mr Fukner and I meandered up the geological steps of the hillside until we reached the site in question.
Looking northwestLooking northeast
Standing just over four-feet tall, this solitary stone overlooks the megalithic Dunruchan complex a half-mile or so to the north and northwest. Like the Dunruchan C monolith, this smaller upright is conglomerate stone. Paul Hornby noted what may be a single cup-marked stone roughly 100 yards east along the same ridge. (Please note that the grid-ref may be slightly out by perhaps 50 yards or so at the most. If anyone visits and can rectify my ineptitude on this matter, please let me know.)
Take the directions as if you’re visiting the ornate petroglyphs known asthe Lunar Stone and the Spotted Stone. Walk past them and down the slope, NW, as if you’re heading to the small valley a few hundred yards away. As you reach the bottom of the slope, closer to the stream, a large boulder catches your attention. This carved stone is just a few yards before you reach it.
Archaeology & History
This simple cup-marked design below the northern slope of Stanbury Hill has, on its northeastern sloping face, a single cup-mark; then, past a curiously-etched line (probably more recent) is a larger circular feature, like a very shallow ‘bowl’ as in the one found in the superb Stag Cottage petroglyph complex 300 miles north (and several other carvings). A few yards away, a large single cup-mark has been etched onto another stone. As with quite a few carvings in this region, they have been missed in the standard archaeocentric surveys.
Travelling north on the Bridgemill to Fettercairn road, park at the layby just before the junction with the minor road (left) through the Forestry Commission’s Inverury Wood. Go through the gate and walk along the track to the end where it joins another track and turn right. About 300 yards along, the Hillock is in a fenced enclosure to the right, accessible over a stile.
Archaeology & History
The site was not mentioned in the Statistical Accounts, nor is the origin of the name recalled, from which it is reasonable to assume that ‘witches’ (howsoever that term was interpreted in the days of persecution by the Kirk Sessions) met there. This is reinforced by there being a plot of land due west called ‘Witchfield’. The Canmore report describes the mound as being,
“situated near the edge of a low natural escarpment..measuring about 18m. in diameter and 2m. high.”
The Ordnance Survey reported in the mid-1860s that the Hillock was,
“An artificial mound….a remarkable looking object….enclosed with ornamental wire fencing, the name is well known in the district, but is not mentioned in the Statistical account nor any other document in the possession of the authorities. James Glenny, Gardener at Inglismaldie states that he assisted to open this, under directions from the Earl of Kintore, about Seven years ago, and that after clearing away the top soil there were found several stone coffins containing human bones and a clay urn containing what appeared to be calcined human bones….”
The site shown at the top of the 1865 6″ OS Map.The Hillock with 3 stones in the foreground
Another remarkable feature of the Hillock enclosure is an arc of three large earth fast boulders to the north-west of the mound. It has the appearance of being an incomplete, possibly four poster circle. The stones are not listed by Aubrey Burl (2000) as being part of a circle, and if indeed it was a circle there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of the fourth stone, which would have been positioned nearest to the Hillock. Unless the Hillock was imagined to be the ‘missing’ fourth stone.
Three stones – once part of a circle?
A ‘well’ is shown on the modern OS map in the corner of the enclosure nearest the stile, but there was no evidence of this on the day of my visit.
Despite its rather remote location, it was noticeable by the well trodden state of the long grass on the day of my visit that the site receives quite a few visitors – a venue still for witches?
References:
Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2000.
Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, The Archaeological Sites & Monuments of South Kincardine, Kincardine and Deeside District, HMSO: Edinburgh 1982.
Close to the ancient boundary of north Lanarkshire—if not actually on it—and looking down on the River Clyde, was once a prehistoric burial mound, probably Bronze Age in nature. Described first of all in David Ure’s (1793) early survey of Rutherglen, he told that:
“A tumulus of earth, supposed to have been originally a burying place, was lately demolished in the estate of Shawfield, a few yards from Polmadie; and the place where it stood converted into a mill-dam. None of its contents attracted the particular attention of the workmen employed in removing it.”
The site was subsequently referenced in Hugh MacDonald’s (1860) excellent work, but no remains of it now exist.
Site of St Conval’s Well, off-centre beneath the tree
This all-but-forgotten holy well was becoming nothing but a faded memory even in the middle of the 19th century. Excluded from all of the previous Scottish holy well surveys, the site is mentioned in George Campbell’s Eastwood (1902) where, in his description of the obscure saint, St. Conval or Convallus—to whom Eastwood parish was dedicated—the position of the well is mentioned. When St. Conval first came to the area, said Campbell,
“The particular spot which the saint selected for his cell would be determined, as was so commonly the case, by the then remarkable spring which can still be traced in the lower part of what was the glebe before the excambion in 1854. Within the memory of man, even of my own, as I resided for a year in the old manse, before its removal from the early site, this well, as stated in the last Statistical Account, discharged about eleven imperial pints a minute, and was perennial, affected neither by drought nor rain. Up to that date the water was sufficiently abundant to supply the manse and all the families in what was still a bit of a hamlet, the remains of the Kirkton, as it was formerly called. But coincident to the removal of the last living remains of an ecclesiastical establishment from the spot, it has well nigh dried-up, through disturbances caused, it is believed, by the working of pits and quarries in the neighbourhood; but it is confidently hoped that what remains of it may be preserved, and a memorial erected over it of the long-departed past, situated as it is within the enclosure of the now extended burial ground. There can be no doubt that in its waters our fathers were baptised when they renounced Druidism, or whatever was their pagan form of faith, and a sacredness would thus naturally attach to it in former times…”
Site on 1863 map as ‘Spring’
When we sought out this well in the furthest corner of the old churchyard—where Ordnance Survey placed the ‘Spring’ on the 1863 map—we were greeted by a completely dried-up site, long since fallen back to Earth, with little hope of it ever resurfacing unless good local people choose to do something. The well was surrounded by excrement and litter and it truly needs a good clean-up and a dig down to bring the waters back to the surface.
In an Appendix to Campbell’s Eastwood, he tells that he came across a map-reference to the site, where it was shown as “St. Ninian’s Well”, but I have been unable to locate this.
From Kenmore, take the minor road on the south-side of Loch Tay for 1½ miles (2.4km) until you reach the hamlet of Acharn. From here take the track uphill for ½-mile past the Acharn waterfalls and follow the same route to the Acharn Burn tumulus. Walk past here along the track and, just before you reach the wooded burn, bear right and walk uphill for nearly another half-mile, roughly parallel to the Allt Mhucaidh (Remony Burn). As you reach the proper moorland, you’ll see the stones rising up!
Archaeology & History
This is quite a spectacular site! Not for the size of the stones or the arrangement of the megaliths, but for the setting! It’s outstanding! When a bunch of us wandered up here a few months ago, snow was still on the peaks and Nature was giving us a real mix of Her colours and breath in a very changeable part of Her season. Twas gorgeous. Perhaps the setting was the thing which has kept the circle pretty quiet until recent years. It’s high up – and out of season the freezing winds and driving rains would keep all but the healthiest of crazy-folk away. We all only wished we’d have had more time here. But that aside…
Lara between the old stonesJ.D. MacLeod’s 1909 groundplan
Along with the changeable weather She gives up here, the literary-types have given this circle changeable names too. Nowadays known as the Acharn Falls stone circle, in truth that’s a mile away and lacks in both visual and geographical accuracy. ‘Greenland’ was the name cited when J.B. MacKenzie (1909) wrote about it more than a hundred years back, and it’s the name we find in Mr Burl’s (2000) magnum opus, despite him telling how “a local name for it is Auchliacha, ‘the field of stones'” (Burl 1995), so perhaps we should adhere to what the locals say (my preference generally).
The atmospheric ring, looking WGreenland Circle, looking N
The ring is in quite a mess, having had a drystone wall built through it in the last 100 years. No walling is shown on the early Ordnance Survey maps, so some local land-owners (an english incomer?) was probably responsible. The stones used to stand in parts of the ancient forest, which must have looked and felt quite something before they ripped the trees away. It was hiding away in the woods when J.B. MacKenzie (1909) came here, shortly after the “modern wall” as he called it, had been constructed through the circle. He wrote:
“Six stones remain on the site, of which four are still erect and in position, and two are prostrate, one of which has apparently fallen inwards and the other outwards of the line of the circle, the diameter of which, touching the inner sides of the stones still standing, is 27 feet 9 inches. Mr MacLeod has supplied the following dimensions of the several stones:
A — 6 feet 9 inches x 3 feet 6 inches, lying flat
B — 8 feet 4 inches, in circumference at ground level
——1 foot 7 inches, high above the ground level
C — 6 feet 10 inches, in circumference at ground level
——4 feet 0 inches, high above ground level
D — 6 feet 0 inches, in circumference at ground level
——4 feet 3 inches, high above ground level
E — 7 feet 8 inches x 4 feet 6 inches, lying flat
F — 9 feet 0 inches, in circumference at ground level
——5 feet 8 inches, high above ground level.”
Coles’ 1910 sketch of the siteColes’ 1910 ground-plan
The year after MacKenzie’s notes, the great Fred Coles (1910) paid a visit here. Noting how high it was in the landscape compared to other megalithic rings in the region (it’s the highest known circle, at 1240 feet up), he went on to give his usual detailed appraisal, telling:
“In a little clearing amid these woods on Craggan Odhar, but disfigured by a dike which separates some of the Stones from the others, stands this Greenland Circle of which the ground-plan is given…. The Stones are six in number, of which four are erect, and they all appear to be of the quartzitic schist. Some disturbance has occurred, and it seems probable that there were at least two more Stones originally, one between B and C at the spot marked with a cross, and the other similarly marked midway between D and E. There is, however, no vestige of any Standing Stone in the sides of the dike itself.
“On the south-west is Stone A, the tallest, with pointed top, 5 feet 7 inches in height, oblong in contour, and measuring at the base 9 feet 5 inches. Having several deep horizontal fissures, this Stone…bears an odd resemblance to masonry. The next Stone, B, lies prostrate, measuring 7 feet 9 inches by 4 feet, and about 1 foot in thickness above ground. The little oblong Stone, C, on the other side of the dike, stands only 1 foot 10 inches above ground, and probably is a mere fragment—the stump of a much larger block. At D the Stone is 4 feet 3 inches in height, and is a very narrow slab-like piece; Stone E, which has a decided lean over towards the interior of the Circle, is 4 feet 2 inches high, and is in basal girth 6 feet 6 inches. Like the others, it is angular and thinnish in proportion to its breadth. Stone F measures 8 feet 2 inches by 5 feet 2 inches, and its position, with the narrow end resting almost on the circumference, suggests, as in other cases, the probability that it was this narrow end which was buried when the Stone was erected. These blocks were most likely brought from the low cliffy ledges near, for, as the name ‘Craggan Odhar’ implies, the place was, before being planted, conspicuous for its Grey Crags.”
Although no modern excavation has taken place, when the brilliant local historian William Gillies (1925) first got round to exploring the circle, he remedied that situation. In probing the ground beneath the surface when the weather conditions allowed, Mr Gillies found that there seemed to have been more standing stones in the circle than presently meets the eye. He wrote:
“I paid several visits last summer to this lonely and elevated spot, and examined the ground for stones, where the wide spaces between those indicated on the plan (see Coles’ 1910 drawing, above) suggested that others might be concealed beneath the turf. There would appear to be three stones missing, which would make the circle to consist of nine in all when it was entire. With little trouble, at a depth of only 3 inches, I located a large flat stone measuring 5 feet 6 inches by 4 feet 8 inches. It had stood on the north-western arc of the circle half-way between the fallen stone on the west and the broken standing stone on the north-north-west. It had fallen outwards. The foundation of the wall, built probably some seventy years ago to enclose the plantation, rested on the edge of the stone. The ground along the circumference of the circle between the three stones on the eastern side was carefully probed, but the rod touched only small loose stones.
“I next turned up the centre of the circle, and at a depth of 5 inches below the surface came upon a dark deposit. It extended over a space of 2 feet square and was about 5 inches in depth. It was mixed with a white limy substance consisting of calcined bones, bits of which along with a sample of the dark substance I brought to the Museum. A bit of charcoal from the deposit revealed the lines of cleavage in the wood. There is no peat at the spot, although the elevation, which is at least 1200 feet, might suggest it. The surrounding soil is of a reddish colour, and quite unlike the deposit which must have been placed there, and which was probably a burial after cremation.”
Greenland circle, looking NE
Gillies was exemplary in his exploration of sites that were on the verge of disappearing from tongue and text and we remain incredibly grateful for his later exposition on the antiquarian remains and legends of this truly stunning landscape. In Aubrey Burl’s (1995; 2000) respective summaries of this stone circle, as well as that of John Barnatt (1989), they ascribe the situation of it originally having 9 stones, as Gillies suggested.
Visit this site! If you’re into megaliths, you’ll bloody love it!
References:
Barnatt, John, Stone Circles of Britain – volume 2, BAR: Oxford 1989.
Burl, Aubrey, A Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 1995.
Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2000.
Money, Bob, Scottish Rambles – Corners of Perthshire, Perth 1990.
Acknowledgements: Many thanks to the unholy bunch who helped travel, locate, photograph and take notes on the day of our visit here, including Aisha, Lara & Leo Domleo; Lisa & Fraser; Nina and Paul. Let’s do it again and check out the unrecorded stuff up there next time!
Healing Well (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NS 5805 6728
Archaeology & History
Physic Well on 1865 map
Any site named as a ‘Physic Well’ anywhere in Britain is, by definition, a spring of water renowned for its medicinal properties. Nowadays however, at this and other sites with the same name, local people aren’t even aware that such places exist. A sad state of affairs indeed… This Physic Well was once found just off Trossach Street in Maryhill—which was once called ‘Well Street’, after the medicinal spring itself—in fields just above the road. Today a small housing estate has been built on top of the site and the only sign of it ever being here appears to be marked by a birch tree in the gardens at the middle of the enclosing buildings.
Birch tree marks the spot!
The site was listed in several early 19th century municipal surveys of Glasgow, but the greater references to it seem to be from local people who described it as a place that was visited annually along the perambulation of the old Barony parish, despite it being just over the edge and into Maryhill. In an extensive footnote in Renwick’s Glasgow Memorials he gives us a fascinating insight into the gatherings at the Well, and the popular customs and social activities of the period:
“William Graham, of Lambhill, aged 69, recollected in his school days, “drinking at a well a very little to the north of the Barony glebe, which was called the Physic Well, and there was then a Royalty stone a little to the west of the glebe.” The Physic Well, perhaps all that effective drainage had left of the former loch, otherwise called ‘Plommaris Hole,’ was utilised at the periodic perambulation of marches for impressing on the memory recollection of this part of the boundary. The means taken for this end may be gathered from the evidence of John Alston, weaver, aged 54, who says that, when he was an apprentice, his master told him that it was a custom, “when the magistrates rode the marches to duck some of the last-made burgesses in the Physic Well”; and, on the same topic, James Bryce, victualler, aged 70, depones that, forty years ago, it was commonly reported in the town that at the marches-riding it was the custom “to duck the youngest town-officer in a well called the Physic Well, which is now filled up, but which was near the Barony glebe.” Janet Paterson, widow of William Paterson, labourer, aged 78, recollects of another well, called the Loanhead Well, in the Barony Glebe, from which she carried water when a young girl. ”About 57 yean ago she saw two ploughs going in the Barony Glebe on the Fast Day of the town Sacrament. In general people wrought the Physic Well Park on the town’s Fast Day, but she never saw them working on the Barony Glebe except on the occasion mentioned.” William M’Culloch, farmer, Lightbum, aged 57, says that when Mr. Hill was minister of the Barony parish, the deponent’s father was employed by him, for a good many years, to plough the Barony Glebe, and on one occasion he recollects the glebe being sown and harrowed upon a Fast Day preceding the town Sacrament. Mr. Hill told his father that the glebe was not within the town’s bounds, that the sowing and harrowing it on the Fast Day could disturb nobody, and that his father could have the sowing finished in time to go to church. Peter Ferguson, weaver, aged 5$, had resided in the neighbourhood of the Barony Glebe from his infancy. When he was a boy he heard it very frequently mentioned by old people, as a common report, that when delinquents or debtors, prosecuted before the town courts of Glasgow, were pursued by the town officers, for the purpose of being apprehended, they were in the practice of endeavouring to get across the Howgate Strand; and if they accomplished this they set the officer at defiance and pointed their fingers at them in derision, as being then without the city’s jurisdiction. Howgate Strand was a small run of water which crossed Castle Street, at the south end of the glebe, then passed through the infirmary grounds and joined the Molendinar Burn a little to the north of the High Church. Another witness, Thomas Alston, manucturer, aged 55, places the fugitives’ point of escape at the north end of the glebe. In his young days it was the practice for the town officers to apprehend boys who were playing on the streets upon the Sabbath and the Fast Days preceding town Sacraments; and he remembered well that it was a common opinion with him and his companions that they were safe from the town officers when they got beyond the Physic Well, on the Glasgowfield road, or beyond the spot marked on Mr. Fleming’s plan ‘Toll-house’, on the Kirkintilloch road, as they considered themselves to be then without the town’s jurisdiction.”
The Well was close to a series of old boundary or ‘merche’ stones, but no ancient ones seem to remain.
The medicinal potential for the water was examined in 1771 by a Dr William Irvine, who found it to be a chalybeate or iron-bearing spring, and to possess “a little muriatic acid”, giving the well both tonic and fortifying properties.
The demise of this old healing spring of water occurred a few generations ago by the look of things. Marked on the earliest Ordnance Survey maps—erroneously as the ‘Three Tree Well’, as Mr McDonald (1860) will soon explain—it was located on the west side of the River Kelvin, halfway between the Kirklee footbridge and the ancient ford, but the only remains we can see of it now appears to be the brick-walling above which a pair of sycamoretrees rise, or perhaps beneath the man-hole cover on the path lower down.
Three Tree Well on 1865 map
…But it wasn’t always this way… Known to be a chalybeate, or iron-bearing spring (which are always regarded as tonics in local lore, fortifying the blood general health), when the local writer Hugh McDonald (1860) wrote about it in his wonderful Rambles round Glasgow in the middle of the 19th century, he cast a picture of the area that few Glaswegians would recognise today—and a damn good swipe at the incomers trying to alter the names of traditional places:
“At the western extremity of the Botanic Gardens a narrow passage, in popular parlance called “the Kyber Pass,” leads over a green knoll to the volley of the Kelvin at the famous “Pear-tree Well.” …The scenery of the Kelvin in the vicinity of the Pear-tree Well is of the most romantic and beautiful description. The banks are bold, and in many places fringed with masses of foliage to the water-lip; while the rustic bridge, the lonely cottage, and the picturesque mill, seem planted by the very hand of taste, along the meanderings of the rippled and murmuring stream, wherever they are likely to produce a telling effect… Altogether the scene and its accessories present the very choicest of those harmonious combinations of colour and form which the landscape limner loves to gaze upon, and fondly endeavours, in the pride of his skill, to transfer to the living canvas. No wonder it is that Kelvin Grove has long been the favourite haunt of our City lovers, and the favourite theme of our local poets; for Nature has, indeed, strewn its recesses with charms as fresh and beautiful as though it were situated far from the dwellings of men, instead of almost under the wing of our most dinsome and dusky of towns.
“The Pear-tree Well issues from the bottom of a steep and thickly-wooded bank, which, at this point, rises gracefully from the rocky bed of the streamlet. The crystalline and deliciously cool water is collected into a considerable cavity in the earth; immediately over which three large trees—a plane and two handsome ashes—raise on high their umbrageous heads, while their sturdy roots, in serpent-like convolutions, twine around the watery hollow beneath, as if to defend it from the intrusion of the penetrating noonday sun. Some suppose that it is from this trio of sylvan guardians that the fountain has received its name — and that the ‘Three-tree’ and not the ‘Pear-tree’ Well is its proper denomination. The advocates of the latter theory further remark, that there is no pear-tree in the vicinity, and that consequently the popular name is probably but a corruption of “Three-tree.” There is high authority for saying that names are things of slight consequence; but however that may be, we are inclined, in the present instance, to be conservative of the old name for this favourite well, and to retain it in spite of all attempts at innovation. Whether from langsyne associations or not, we shall not attempt to discover, but Pear-tree Well sounds most musically on our ear — and we should be loath to have it suppressed by the word-coinage of any crotchety theorist; and besides, who can tell what kind of trees may have formerly graced the locality? A perfect orchard of the pear tribe may, at some past period, have clothed the banks of Kelvin for anything that these violators of a time-honoured name—”these men who are given to change”—know to the contrary. No, no! Pear-tree Well it has been, and Pear-tree Well to us, at least, it must remain. We had as lief meet an old friend with a new face, as an old haunt with a new name.
“Having done our devoirs to the spirit of the fountain, by draining a bicker of the translucent water, which, by the way, is slightly impregnated with iron, we sit ourselves down on the bank above, under the ashen tree, when one of two friends with whose company we have been honoured, inspired by the half-gelid beverage, bursts suddenly out with—
“Let us haste to Kelvin Grove, bonnie lassie, O.”
“We of course join heartily in the measure, which has for many years been highly popular in the west of Scotland, and which we naturally enjoy with double zest, amid the scenery to which it refers…”
Pear Tree Well in 1896
The great historian and romantic, J.A. Hammerton (1920) even passed here, telling how sufferers of disease relied upon its curing waters to heal them. It is just such a pity that this picturesque medicinal spring and its rivulet are with us no more…
References:
Brotchie, T.C.F., Glasgow Rivers and Streams: Their Legend and Lore, John Maclehose: Glasgow 1914.
The spring is in the trees. The roof of the church is visible past the tree
Take the B8062 North from Auchterarder, and turn right immediately after crossing Kinkell Bridge. Continue through the hamlet of Trinity Gask, and take the next turn left. The Well is situated in the wooded area of land to your left, before you reach the church on the right. I tried visiting in summer but was beaten back by the boscage of man high nettles, goose grass and brambles. An autumn visit was made, and access was readily available to the wooded area over a barbed wire fence from the field behind the wood.
Archeology & History
The Canmore description quotes from an August 1967 report by an Ordnance Survey inspector:
“Trinity Well is now dry, and all that remains is an overgrown hollow. A manhole cover nearby suggests the spring is now piped.”
On the day of my 2014 visit, the water was flowing from an issue on the field side of the woodland. There was some low walling on the field side of the enclosure, otherwise no masonry or paving was visible. Any there may have been is now either buried or robbed for building material.
The waters still flow despite a 1967 report to the contrary
The 1796 Statistical Account has this to say: ‘ The most noted well in the parish is at Trinity Gask. It is remarkable for the purity and lightness of its water; the spring is copious and perennial. Superstition, aided by the interested artifices of popish priests, raised, in times of ignorance and bigotry, this well to no small degree of celebrity. It was affirmed, that every person who was baptised with the water of this well, would never be seized with the plague….. But the extraordinary virtue of Trinity Gask well has perished with the downfall of superstition, and the introduction of a free and rational enquiry into nature and religion.’
Walling is visible behind the spring issue
The 1837 New Statistical Account goes on to say: ‘….the Trinity Well, a little to the South of the manse, of great renown in Popish days for the performing of miraculous cures, fortifying against plague, witchcraft and such other evils. The right of bleaching at this well is one of the privileges of the minister’.
The Rev. John Wilson writes, in The Gazetteer of Scotland: ‘…a noticeable object is a well famous in Roman times for alleged thaumaturgic properties…’.
Processions to the Well were made on Trinity Sunday and the first Sunday in June
References:
The (First) Statistical Account of Scotland, 1796, Volume 18, page 487
The New (Second) Statistical Account of Scotland, 1837, Volume 10, page 335
