Tag: traditions

Holy Well, Shoreditch, London

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Holy Well (destroyed):  OS Grid reference – TQ 3337 8245

Archaeology & History

Holywell Lane on 1877 map

First described at the beginning of the 12th century as “fons qui dicitur Haliwelle“, these sacred waters were thereafter described in a variety of documents before eventually, in 1382, giving its name to the road on which it was found.  When the topographer John Stow (1603) described the well—along with those of St. Clement’s and Clerken Well—it was once “sweet, wholesome, and clear” and “frequented by scholars and youths of the city in the summer evenings.”  However, in his day it was already in decline, as he told that the “Holy well is much decayed and spoiled, with filthiness purposely laid there, for the heightening of the ground for garden plots.”

The history of the site was mentioned in John Noorthouck’s (1773) survey, where he told us:

“In the parish are two prebends, and part of a third, belonging to St Paul’s cathedral, in the city of London: The first dominated by Eald-Street, or Old Street, received that appellation from the Saxons being part of the Roman military way: the second, which had been a separate village for many years, by the name of Hochestone, vulgarly Hoxton, likewise itself to be of a Saxon origin: the third called Haliwell, had its name from a vicinal fountain, which, for the salubrity of its water, had the epithet Holy conferred on it.

In King John’s Court, Holywell-lane, are to be found the ruins of the priory of St. John Baptist, of Benedictine nuns, founded by Robert the son of Gelranni, prependary of Haliwell, and confirmed by charter of Richard I in the year1189. It was rebuilt in the reign of Henry VII by Sir Thomas Lovell, knight of the garter; who was there buried: and the following ditty was in consequence painted in most of the windows.
“All the nuns of Holywell,
“Pray for the soul of Thomas Lovell.”

The complete demise of the well occurred in the early part of the 19th century and efforts to locate its original position have proved troublesome.  Indeed, the modern Holywell Lane would seem  to be little more than an approximation of its whereabouts.  It was an issue explored at some length in the great A.S. Foord’s (1910) magnum opus, who wrote:

“In recent times efforts have been made to locate the well, and some of the results communicated to Notes and Queries.  A Mr. R. Clark drew attention, through the medium of that publication, to an article in The Builder of September 19, 1896, which states that ”the ancient holy well should be looked for in the area between Bateman’s Row and New Inn Yard and behind the Board School in Curtain Road, that is to say, west of New Inn Street.”  This is all very circumstantial, but the writer bases his statement on the survey by Peter Chassereau, taken in 1745, in which the supposed position of the well is marked by a cross and the words “Ye well from which the liberty derives its name.”  It should be borne in mind however that, as pointed out by Colonel W. F. Prideaux, Chassereau did not make his survey till more than two hundred years had elapsed from the date of the dissolution of the Nunnery (1539); the position of the well could therefore have been only a matter of tradition.  Another contributor to Notes and Queries (8th Series, May 22, 1897), quotes an article in the Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects (vol. iv., 3rd series, p. 237), by Mr. E. W. Hudson, who says that the well of the priory was situate on the south side of what is known as Bateman’s Row, but was formerly (before 1799) called Cash’s Alley, near Curtain Road.  This agrees substantially with Mr. Clark’s statement.  Mr. Lovegrove, writing in 1904, says: “The well itself is to be found in a marble-mason’s yard in Bateman’s Row, but is covered over.”  The same writer notes that of the Nunnery buildings only a piece of stone wall about 50 feet long, in a timber yard at 186, High Street, Shoreditch, is now left.”

References:

  1. Foord, Alfred Stanley, Springs, Streams and Spas of London: History and Association, T. Fisher Unwin: London 1910.
  2. Gover, J.E.B., Mawer, Allen & Stenton, F.M., The Place-Names of Middlesex, Cambridge University Press 1942.
  3. Lovegrove, G.H., “Holywell Priory, Shoreditch,” in Home Counties, volume 6, 1904.
  4. Mills, A.D., A Dictionary of London Place-Names, Oxford University Press 2001.
  5. Noorthouck, John, A New History of London, Including Westminster and Southwark, R. Baldwin: London 1773.
  6. Stow, John, A Survey of London, John Windet: London 1603.
  7. Sunderland, Septimus, Old London Spas, Baths and Wells, John Bale: London 1915.
  8. Wood, Alexander, Ecclesiastical Antiquities of London, Burns & Oates: London 1874.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

St. Helen’s Well, Hartlepool, Durham

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Holy Well (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – NZ 5236 3421

Also Known as:

  1. Freemen’s Well

Archaeology & History

Highlighted on the 1861 OS-map of the area, there is a curious lack of literary references to this holy well until Cuthbert Sharp wrote about it in 1816.  Records of an adjacent St. Helen’s Chapel are in plentiful supply, going all the way back to around 1200 CE—although it’s pretty obvious that a water supply would be attached to the chapel, despite its late literary account.   Sharp told us:

“This chapel is stated to have been on the warren.  According to local tradition, a church once stood near the Freemen’s or St. Helen’s Well, in the Far-well Field, where the ground at present is considerably elevated, and where many hewn stones are constantly discovered, which renders it highly probable that this was the site of the chapel in question.”

Site shown on 1861 OS map
Site on the 1862 Town plan

When Robert Surtees visited here in 1823, the well was still visible, but remains of the chapel were negligible.  On the 1862 Hartlepool Town map, it would seem that a construction—perhaps a well-house—covered the waters, although whatever it may have been seems to have been destroyed sometime in the 1880s, when the entire area was built over.  No remains of this sacred site have been seen since.

References:

  1. Cuthbert Sharp, A History of Hartlepool, Francis Humble: Durham 1816.
  2. Surtees, Robert, The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham (4 volumes), London 1816-40.

Acknowledgements:  The map accompanying this site profile is Reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland. 

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Tom Tallon’s Grave, Kirknewton, Northumberland

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Tumulus (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – NT 9323 2800

Also Known as:

  1. Auld Wife’s Apronful o’ Stanes
  2. Tom Tallon’s Tumulus

Archaeology & History

Site on the 1866 OS-map

Highlighted on the earliest OS-maps about half a mile to the south of the great prehistoric camp of Yeavering Bell and 100 yards southwest of Tom Tallon’s Crag, there once stood an apparently “massive” Bronze Age tumulus, or cairn, called Tom Tallon.  I’d hedge a bet that it was much older, from the neolithic period.  It was described by P.A. Graham (1921) as “the largest cairn in the district,” but when it was visited by the antiquarian Henry MacLauchlan in July 1858, he reported that “it was being removed to make a fence”!!!  Unbe-fuckin’-lievable… Who were the dickheads that did that?!

Folklore

The Ordnance Survey Name Book of 1860 for Tom Tallon’s Crag told that,

“There is a vague tradition about Tom Tallon having been a Warrior and Slain here – hence the name, but nothing authentic respecting Tom, can now be ascertained.”

The word tom derives from “a rounded hill”, sometimes associated with a tumulus and in Scotland (just over the border) associated “with a dwelling place of the fairies” with tallon suggested by Graham (1921) to derive from “tal, a forehead or promontory, and Llan, an enclosure.”

What is quite obviously an older name, or certainly one that was more recognised by local people, is its title of the Auld Wife’s Apronful of Stones: a title we find associated with a number of the giant cairns in northern England and Scotland.  It relates to the creation myth of the site, whereby the countless stones that made up the cairn were dropped or thrown across the landscape by a giantess who inhabited this area.

References:

  1. Hall, James, A Guide to Glendale, M. Brand: Wooler 1887.
  2. Graham, P. Anderson, Highways and Byways in Northumbria, MacMillan: London 1921.
  3. MacLauchlan, Henry, “Notes on Camps in the Parishes of Branxton, Carham, Ford, Kirknewton and Wooller, in Northumberland,” in History Berwickshire Naturalists Club, volume 24, 1922.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Holy Well, Nether Heyford, Northamptonshire

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Holy Well (lost):  OS Grid Reference – SP 66 59 (approximate)

Archaeology & History

In George Baker’s (1822) massive regional history work he spoke of the village being “well supplied with springs, one of which, called Holywell, is medicinal.”  But it would seem to have fallen foul of that thing called progress, as no one has spoken of it since then.  When the Northampton historian, Beeby Thompson, looked for the site early in the 20th century, his enquiries drew a blank and he reported simply that “at the present time no one in the village appears to know of such a well.”  A field-name survey of the area may prove worthwhile…

References:

  1. Baker, George, The History and Antiquities of the County of Northampton, J.B. Nichols: London 1822.
  2. Harte, Jeremy, English Holy Wells – volume 2, HOAP: Wymeswold 2008.
  3. Thompson, Beeby, “Peculiarities of Waters and Wells,” in Journal Northamptonshire Natural History Society, volume 17, 1914.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Fairy Well, Liversedge, West Yorkshire

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Sacred Well:  OS Grid Reference – SE 1977 2309

Getting Here

Fairy Well’s boggy ground

Best approached from Heckmondwike/Liversedge and going up Roberttown Road where, just past the Spen Valley High School parking spot, an almost dead straight footpath takes you down (northwest) into the woods.  Walk down here for about 100 yards and then go left over the stile into the small copse of trees.  Once you come out the trees at the other side, walk up the slope in the field that you’re now in.  As you approach the line of trees at the top, you’ll notice the ground gets very boggy.  Look carefully under the trees and you’ll notice an embedded flat stone protruding out and a somewhat trivial trickle of water into the grass at the front.  That’s it!

Archaeology & History

Site on the 1854 OS-map

Highlighted on the 1854 Ordnance survey map of the area, this is a somewhat ruinous site which has seen better days.  Even after good downpours it’s not very obvious and, in truth, could do with being cleaned-up, cleared out, and brought back into the old life it once had.  If you look carefully beneath the roots of the covering tree, you’ll notice a  decent-sized flat worked stone sticking out at the bottom of the sycamore and below this, at the back, almost covered in earth, you can make out some brick walling at the rear.  It takes some finding!  This is evidently the remains of a small protective well-house, now in total ruin.

Old cover of the well

When we visited the place a few weeks ago, there seemed to be no water inside.  Instead, the water emerges into a small bog just below the tree-line a few yards away from the covering slab from whence it originally flowed.

Folklore

Obviously the abode of fairy folk in bygone days, all trace of the folklore and habits of them seems to have been lost long ago….

Acknowledgements:  Huge thanks to mi old mate Gary Ferner for helping us uncover the source of the waters, which was almost completely covered in soil.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Fairy Oak, Whitford, Flintshire

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Sacred Tree:  OS Grid Reference – SJ 1577 7889

Folklore

Highlighted on the earliest Ordnance Survey map of the region in 1878 and described much earlier by Thomas Pennant (1796)—almost as legendary as the fairies themselves in some parts—this ancient tree was obviously a place of great repute in the mythic history of the people in previous centuries.  Animistic relationships with the landscape were still deeply embedded in the daily lives of our peasant communities all across the country when Pennant wrote about this place.  In his antiquarian history of the area he described the great mansion of Downing Hall and in its grounds the ruins of Molandina Abbey.  “Above this,” he wrote,

Fairy Oak on the 1878 map
Pennant’s 1796 drawing

“is a spreading oak of great antiquity, size, and extent of branches: it has got the name of the Fairy Oak.  In this very century a poor cottager, who lived near the spot, had a child who grew uncommonly peevish; the parents attributed this to the fairy, and imagined that it was a changeling.  They took the child, put it in a cradle, and left it all night beneath the tree, in hopes that the tylwydd têg, or fairy family, or the fairy folk, would restore their own before morning.  When morning came they found the child perfectly quiet, so went away with it, quite confirmed in their belief.”

Nearby, and in the same grounds of the mansion, Pennant told there to be an even older and greater oak tree that “has in it furrows so deep, and of aspect so uncommonly venerable, as to render its shade as worthy of the solemn rites of the Druids.”

References:

  1. Pennant, Thomas, The History of the Parishes of Whiteford and Holywell, B. & J. White: London 1796.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian 

Mount Lodge, Portobello, Edinburgh, Midlothian

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Cairn (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – NT 3071 7366

Archaeology & History

The only reference I can find of this long lost cairn is in William Baird’s (1898) massive history work of the area—but even in his day he reported that “it has long since disappeared.”  He wrote:

“We have a curious reference in a charter of Kelso Abbey, granted about 1466, to a cairn of stones which stood near the south-east corner of the garden wall at Mount Lodge, Portobello.  In the charter, where it is referred to as forming part of the boundary of the lands of Figgate, it is described as, ‘a certain heap of stones there deposited.'”

The cairn was likely of considerable size and, said Baird, “in all probability marked the site of an ancient place of sepulture.”

References:

  1. Baird, William, Annals of Duddingston and Portobello, Andrew Elliot: Edinburgh 1898.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Balnadrum, Moulin, Pitlochry, Perthshire

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Souterrain (lost):  OS Grid Reference – NN 9447 5890

Archaeology & History

In Hugh Mitchell’s (1923) survey of prehistoric sites in the Pitlochry district, this long lost souterrain was thankfully captured by his pen.  Two years later John Dixon (1925) also mentioned the site, but he was ostensibly copying what Mitchell had written.  We were told:

“About 50 yards west of Balnadrum Farmhouse there is a weem or underground Pict’s house, which was revealed a good many years ago by the plough lifting one of the stone covers.  The exact position of this weem has been lost site of, but could be found without much trouble.  It was about 50 feet long, slightly curved, having an inside width of about 3½ feet and a height of about 5½ feet.  Nothing was found in it and the cover was carefully replaced.”

The site was included in Wainwright’s (1963) standard survey, where he opted for some slight scepticism regarding its nature as a souterrain due to it being about 30 miles away, or, as he said, “far withdrawn from the main concentration (of souterrains) in Angus.”  A minor point to be honest…  Nevertheless, he gave attention to the words of a Mr William McLaughlan who was the farmer at Balnadrum until the end of World War 2:

“He was born in 1873 and he estimates that the discovery was made about 1885.  He also confirms the site—it is about 150 feet west of Balnadrum, or directly across the road from the gate which leads to the farmhouse.  This spot is now covered by modern houses and/or their gardens.  To this point there is no conflict in the evidence.  Mr McLaughlan however, does not remember a 50-foot passage, and he thinks that the structure was removed.”

Nonetheless, all are agreed that an underground structure of some sort existed at this spot.  Whether or not it still hides deep beneath the soils, filled in, or whether it was destroyed when the houses were built, we know not…

References:

  1. Dixon, John H., Pitlochry Past and Present, L. Mackay: Pitlochry 1925.
  2. Mitchell, H., Pitlochry and District: Its Topography, Archaeology and History, L. Mackay: Pitlochry 1923.
  3. Wainwright, F.T., The Souterrains of Southern Pictland, RKP: London 1963.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Warsett Hill, Brotton, North Yorkshire

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Round Barrows (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – NZ 692 214

Archaeology & History

Tumuli shown on 1920 map

On top of the large plateau that is Warsett Hill, on the southwest side of the old trig-point, could once be seen a cluster of at least seven burial mounds or tumuli.  The mounds are shown on the first OS-map of the area, but merely as mounds.  It wasn’t until there’d been a subsequent investigation here by local historian J.C. Atkinson in the 19th century that they were highlighted on the 1920 map as “Tumuli.”  Sadly, since then, they’ve all been destroyed.

Very brief notes were written on six out of the seven tombs here by William Hornsby (1917), with only one of them receiving any real attention.  “Of the other six,” Crawford (1980) wrote,

“there is very little information; all were excavated by Atkinson prior to 1893, but his excavations revealed no finds and he stated that all of the mounds had been previously disturbed.  They were later dug by Hornsby, who stated that although he found no sepulchral deposits, all the mounds contained flints.”

In medieval times this became a beacon site, where bonfires were lit.  I can find no further information about this. (NB: This site should not to be confused with another Warsett Hill that exists two miles southeast of here above Skinningrove.)

References:

  1. Crawford, G.M., Bronze Age Burial Mounds in Cleveland, Cleveland County Council 1980.
  2. Hornsby, William & Stanton, R., “British Barrows near Brotton,” in Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, volume 24, 1917.

Acknowledgements:  Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland. 

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Cnoc Dubh, Moulin, Pitlochry, Perthshire

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Stone Circle (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – NN 9424 5871

Archaeology & History

Missing from the primary surveys of Burl (2000) and Barnatt (1989), a mention of this long lost site was made by local historian Hugh Mitchell (1923) in his survey of the area.  He told that,

“On the east side of the Moulin road beyond the Hydro Hotel a knoll and a clump of trees will be noticed on the right, inside the Hydropathic grounds; this knoll is known as the Cnoc Dubh, or “Black Knoll” and still bears an uncanny reputation as being an old site of Pagan worship.  There was at one time a stone circle on it, but the stones are said to have been broken up, fully 100 years ago, to build the old farmhouse of Balnadrum.”

Something ancient was there, obviously, as it was mentioned in another earlier account—albeit just a tourist guide of Atholl—which said that, on

“the knoll known as Knock-Dhu, within the (Pitlochry Hydro) grounds, are the remains of a pre-historic fort, now overgrown with pine trees.”

References:

  1. Anon., Atholl Illustrated, L. Mackay: Pitlochry c.1910.
  2. Dixon, John H., Pitlochry Past and Present, L. Mackay: Pitlochry 1925.
  3. Mitchell, H., Pitlochry and District: Its Topography, Archaeology and History, L. Mackay: Pitlochry 1923.

Links:

  1. Canmore

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian