Holy Well: OS Grid Reference – SE 317 813
Having not been here, I can’t say for sure exactly where this forgotten site happens to live! It may be the one shown on modern OS-maps, behind the old post office, on the west-side of the village, but I aint sure. If any local people out there who can help us, we would be hugely grateful!
Archaeology & History
Not to be confused with the other St. Michael’s Well a few miles away in the village of Well, this is a little-known holy well that was described by the historian H.B. McCall (1910), who wrote:
“As Burneston had Saint Lambert’s Fountain, mentioned so early as the 12th Century, so Kirklington possesses its holy well, beside the old Mill House on the north side of the village. Althoguh its name has now passed from the popular remembrance, it is provided in a lease of lands to Roger Croft, in 1628, that his cattle shall have right of access to go into the water near unto a spring called ‘Michaell-well’. both in winter and summer; and we are left in no doubt as to where the spring was situated, for Mrs Alice Thornton has recorded that her father brought water to the Hall in lead pipes from a cistern of the same metal, “near St. Michael’s Well near the mill-race.””
Does anyone know anything more of this all-but-forgotten site?
A short distance to the north in the same village, another sacred water source known as the Lady Well can also be found.
References:
- McCall, H.B., Richmondshire Churches, Elliott Stock: London 1910.
© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian
The 1856 OS 6″ map shows a ‘spring’ next to the Old Mill which may be the Michaell-well referred to. Nearer to the Hall there is a ‘Lady Well’ shown on the same map, the brick built housing of which still stands, although the well itself is dry. The farmer told me that the waters from that spring are now piped to the Big House. Alternatively was the Lady Well originally dedicated to St Michael?