England (north) – Page 13

St. Philip’s Well, Keyingham, East Yorkshire

10/04/202102/02/2024 Paul Hornby

Holy Well (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – TA 23584 25549

Archaeology & History

This holy well was formerly on the northern boundary of a field adjoining the north side of the A1033 west of Keyingham.

In view of the surviving folklore relating to the well it seems that its dedication to St. Philip may have been an effort by the Church to ‘Christianise’ it; and the St Philip here is not the Biblical Apostle, but a local saint – Philip Ingleberd (died c.1325 and also known as Philip Inglebred), whose memory was celebrated by a nearby Cross and a shrine at St Nicholas Church in the village. The well and the cross may have been dedicated some time after 1392 following a ‘miracle’ relating to Philip’s tomb. These were destroyed by the mob in the Reformation, although the cross-base survives. It seems the well may have been restored in the late seventeenth century. By the early twentieth century the well was described as laying on the Common to the west of the village, by then filled in, only showing signs it ever existed by making the ground near its site wet and boggy in a rainy season.

Folklore

George Poulson writing in 1841 told that,

“…a few fields more to the west is a well, called St. Philip’s Well; on a small stone are inscribed W. H. W. D. IG67. W. K. It is called the wishing well; and the country lasses were in the habit of dropping pins, or even a sixpence into it, for the purpose of ensuring to themselves either particular or general good luck.”

William Smith (1923) described the well as one of six wishing wells or pin wells in Yorkshire and, moreover, the only ‘Cross Well’ in the East Riding. At none of these wells was evil allowed to be foreshadowed, and the wells were only to show to a girl the portrait of her future husband. He told us that,

“In every case the wish had to be with truthful devotion, and not divulged to any living person, or the desired consummation would not be gained…. Tradition adds that the well was much visited by maidens, who, on dropping their pins or coins, expressed the wish to see their lovers mirrored on its waters. Thus they kept a custom, dating to the time when the well was counted to be under the control of the fairies.”

And as Keyingham Common was once the abode of the fairies, it is worth noting that some 700 yards west of the site of the well a ‘Pans Hill’ is shown on the old maps, although whether this rural spirit of classical myth ever made it up to the East Riding is altogether another matter….

References:

Arrowsmith, Nancy & Moorse, George, A Field Guide to the Little People, Macmillan: London 1977.
Hope, Robert, Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England, Elliot Stock: London 1893.
Poulson, George, History and Antiquities of the Seigniory of Holderness, Thomas Topping: Hull 1841.
Smith, Rev. William, Ancient Springs & Streams of the East Riding of Yorkshire, A.Brown: Hull 1923.

St. Hilda’s Well, Whitby, North Yorkshire

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Holy Well (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NZ 9006 1102

Archaeology & History

This is one of at least five wells dedicated to St. Hilda in North Yorkshire that my old colleague Graeme Chappell has uncovered over his many years of research. It’s sadly been destroyed, and accounts of it seem to be few and far between; but from the short description of it by Mr J.C. Atkinson (1894)—and helped out by its later title—we at least know where it once was.

In his account of the old roads in the village, Grape Lane was mentioned as far back as 1396, and close by, he wrote,

“is a spring called Seynt-Hild-keld, possibly where the so-called “Virgin pump” stands, or stood, not so very long since.”

This ‘ere “virgin pump” is shown in an old photo taken about 1890, just round the corner from Grape Lane where, today, is the car park on Church Street, opposite The Endeavour.

Folklore

St Hilda was a 7th century saint who was reputed to have founded Whitby Abbey. Her festival date was November 17.

References:

Atkinson, J.C., Memorials of Old Whitby, MacMillan: London 1894.

Cow and Calf Stones, East Bierley, West Yorkshire

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Crosses / Legendary Rocks (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SE 1975 2909

Archaeology & History

Not to be confused with a much more renowned namesake above Ilkley, this was the name given to two old stones that once existed in the middle of the East Bierley hamlet (as it was then) southeast of Bradford. They were two large boulders next to each other, not far from the early farmstead of Cross House (see map, right) and were described in James Parker’s (1904) historic collage of the area, where he informed us that:

“On the village green (are) the primitive large stones locally called the “Cow and Calf stones,” which used to be in days gone by a Preaching Cross and Market Cross.”

When William Cudworth (1876) described the place nearly thirty years prior, he only mentioned a single cross, telling us:

“There is a lane which has long been called Kirkgate at Birkenshaw, leading up to an ancient cross on the hill. The fact of this cross being on the hill must have given rise to the name Kirk (church) gate, as there was not, until a few years ago, any church at Birkenshaw. In a previous paper we had occasion to notice the existence of the cross as an evidence of a pre-church period.”

The meaning behind the name Cow & Calf is unexplained by our respective authors, although Cudworth’s citation of “the cross as an evidence of a pre-church period” is probably not without merit here. It seems very likely that the animal names of the two large stones—akin to the Cow & Calf Rocks at Ilkley and others of the same name elsewhere in the country—that sat near the top of the hill, probably possessed a creation myth similar to others of the same name. From this, it seems logical that local folk held the rocks as important, which would have obviously attracted the regressive attention of Church; so they stuck a cross here to christianize the place and in doing so ensured that local people could continue using the place as a meeting place. This practice (as if you didn’t already know) was widespread.

Although Mr Cudworth seems to give the first real account of the place, field-name records of 1567 listed a ‘Cowrosse’, which may have been the “cross on the Cow” stone. A.H. Smith (1961) listed the site and suggested the element –rosse may derive from a local dialect word meaning a marsh, but a ‘cow’s marsh‘ seems a little odd. It is perhaps just as likely that an error was made in the writing of rosse instead of crosse.

References:

Cudworth, William, Round about Bradford, Thomas Brear: Bradford 1876.
Parker, James, Illustrated History from Hipperholme to Tong, Percy Lund: Bradford 1904.
Smith, A.H., The Place-Names of the West Riding of Yorkshire – volume 3, Cambridge University Press 1961.

Blind Well, Sutton-in-Holderness, East Yorkshire

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Healing Well: OS Grid Reference – TA 1204 3306

Archaeology & History

We don’t know for certain the precise whereabouts of this long lost healing well, but it would seem to be the one highlighted here (right) on the 1855 OS-map. However, I think it equally possible that the small unnamed building, roughly halfway between the highlighted ‘Well’ and Spring Cottage, where the walling meets, could be the site in question. It’s one or the other!

Folklore

When Thomas Blashill (1896) wrote of the Blind Well in his standard history work of the area, memory of it was already falling away. In discussing where local people could wash and look after their health, he told that

“There was one place in the parish where washing seems to have been practised as a curative measure. Down in the East Field, near to Spring Cottage Farm, was the Blindwell, to which the people had access. If they used its waters freely when suffering from sore eyes, their faith would probably be rewarded.”

References:

Blashill, Thomas, Sutton-in-Holderness, William Andrews: Hull 1896.

St Everilda’s Well, Everingham, East Yorkshire

17/02/202117/02/2021 Paul Hornby

Holy Well (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SE 80528 42531

Also Known as:

St Everildis Well

Archaeology & History

Shown on the 1855 Ordnance Survey map as a ‘pump’, in the grounds of Everingham Priory, the ‘seat’ of the lord of the manor, it was in an enclosure formerly open to the people of the village. It was filled in prior to 1923. The water was described as ‘abundant and excellent.’ Graeme Chapman, in his Yorkshire Holy Wells website states:

‘A few metres to the south of the site of the well the modern OS map marks the start of a stream (SE 8055 4250) which could be the original source of the Holy well’s water.’

The present writer has not been able to verify this from the materials available to him.

Everilda, also known as Everild and Averil, is recorded in the York Breviary, printed in 1493. She was a mid Yorkshire Saint who died around 700 CE. According to this source she was of a noble Wessex family who went to Yorkshire with companions Bega and Wulfreda, settling on land called Bishop’s Farm, an estate of the Bishop of York, St Wilfrid , which he gave to them, the place being then called Everildisham. There they established a nunnery, of which all trace is now lost. Her Saint’s day is July 9th. The name of St Everilda has been changed to ‘Emeldis’ in the dedication of the church at Everingham. Some historians claim the village is not named after her, but as a derivation of ‘ham of Eofor’s people’. The only other church known to be dedicated to her is at Nether Poppleton, some 17 miles north west of Everingham.

Folklore

The water of the village and the mothers of Everingham are said to have been blessed by St Everilda, and the Reverend Smith wrote that over a fifty year period, no mother had died in childbirth.

References:

Farmer, David, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987
Raine, James, The Dedications of the Yorkshire Churches, The Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Journal, Vol II, 1873
Salisbury, Matthew Cheung, The Use of York: Characteristics of the Medieval Liturgical Office in York, Borthwick Institute, York, 2008
Smith, Rev William, Ancient Springs & Streams of the East Riding of Yorkshire, A.Brown & Sons, London, Hull & York, 1923
Stanton, Richard, A Menology of England & Wales.., Burns and Oates, London, 1887

Link:

St Everilda’s Well on Yorkshire’s Holy Wells

© Paul T Hornby 2021

High Cross, Aberford, West Yorkshire

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Cross (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SE 433 390

Archaeology & History

Mentioned only in passing in the Becca and Aberford Enclosure Act of 1825, all remains of this site have gone. It was subsequently referred to by Edmund Bogg (1904) in his journey through Elmet as previously standing where the Roman road veered off to the northeast from the “new road”, as it was then. Bogg’s brief description told that from Nut Hill,

“A little distance south, where the old and new roads part, formerly stood a cross; Highcross Cottage keeps its memory green.”

References:

Bogg, Edmund, The Old Kingdom of Elmet, James Miles: Leeds 1904.

Parsonage Well, Manchester, Lancashire

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Holy Well (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SJ 836 985

Archaeology & History

Long since lost beneath the metal and concrete of modern times, even references to this forgotten place are very faint indeed. I expected to find something of it in Henry Taylor’s (1906) giganteum, but it even slipped through his considerable work; and, even where mention of it exists, it is only in passing. In William Proctor’s (1874) survey of early Manchester, he found deeds relating to the land and its early owners wherein the one and only mention of this well appears. It was located near the middle of the city centre, between the Law Courts and Manchester cathedral, in the area known today as the Parsonage Gardens on the east-side of the River Irwell. In earlier centuries this was the abode of a Christian minister, or parson, and the water from this well supplied his religious abode. Proctor wrote:

“Crossing over to the Parsonage, we find that, in 1780, one of its residents was Mr John Quincey, linen-draper, uncle to the English Opium-Eater. In the previous year Mr Quincey was married to Miss Martha Goodyear, of Ardwick. His residence was bounded, it seems, on the north and west by “a narrow street or passage called Black Fryars”; while on the other points of the vane his prospect is thus shown by an extract from a lease dated 1758: — “The orchard or garden plot adjoining the river; it is now fenced out with hedges and ditches.” Some years earlier mention is made of a summer-house, fruit trees, and plants in abundance, with “free liberty of way to the spring or well called the Parsonage Well.” In 1686, Thomas Heyrick of Manchester, gentleman, leased a “tenement and parcel of land abutting upon a messuage and garden heretofore in the possession of George Tipping, deceased, and now the dwelling-house of the warden [Richard Wroe] of the said College; bounded on the east part with the old Parsonage ditch adjoining to the tenement of Mr John Oldfield. Close by are or were the residences of John Nield, Hugh Boardman, Richard Haworth, Esq., and lately Jane Haworth, his widow.” A worn parchment proves the existence, in 1698, of “Parsonage Croft;” another of “Parsonage Pool;” and an order of the Court Leet, 1594, required the tenants to “go along the hedge-side, keeping the footway towards the Parsonage style, for their fetching of water from the river.” In 1765, an advertisement in the Mercury mentions “the sign of the Grey Horse in or near Parsonage Brow.” St Mary’s Church covers the ground once known as the Parsonage Green.”

References:

Proctor, Richard W., Memorials of Manchester Streets, T. Sutcliffe: Manchester 1874.
Taylor, Henry, The Ancient Crosses and Holy Wells of Lancashire, Sherratt & Hughes: Manchester 1906.

Holy Well, Halifax, West Yorkshire

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Holy Well (destroyed): OS Grid-Reference – SE 100 254

Archaeology & History

This sacred site seems to have been destroyed sometime at the end of the 19th century. It was located on the great slopes heading up to Beacon Hill. In 1787, a property survey showed six houses here called Holy Well Cottages and on the 1852 OS-map a “Well” is highlighted at the bend in the pathway of the Old Bank as you’re going uphill, which is the place in question. On my last visit here about thirty years ago, its position was preserved under a large manhole.

References:

Heginbottom, J.A., “Early Christian Sites in Calderdale”, in Proceedings Halifax Antiquarian Society 1988.

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Kendal Maypole, Kendal, Westmorland

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Maypole (destroyed): OS Grid reference – SD 5161 9212

Archaeology & History

Long since gone, it’s existence was recorded by, amongst others, the Kendal historian Cornelius Nicholson. (1861) He described it in relation to one of the town crosses, that was removed due to it being “an obstruction in the street.” The maypole too, he said,

“was another incumbrance, but indispensable, according to the custom of our forefathers. It stood in Kirkland, opposite the house of the late Thomas Reveley, Esq., and was suffered to remain till within eighty years ago. In the time of our good Queen Katherine, who may fairly be supposed to have partaken of the amusements, countenanced by her royal consort, the original festivity of maying and morris-dancing would be here celebrated, by the annual ceremony of “maying” when, immediately after sunrise, on the 1st of May, processions, entering the town at various inlets, streamed through the streets, with music of horns and flutes; boys with their May-gads (willow-wands twined with cowslips), and girls with their “brats” full of flowers — young and old alike joining in merry laughter, and song, and the customary chorus, “We have brought the summer home.” When the above-named ceremonies became less fashionable, the May Pole was made the rendezvous of all the milkmaids in the neighbourhood, who came and paraded round it on Easter Mondays. On other occasions of rejoicing, afterwards, such for instance, as terminating an apprenticeship, and the like, it became customary for young men to go and dance around it.”

The author then told that this annual village ceremony was still being performed at the beginning of the 19th century, “in the assemblage of young people in the Vicar’s Fields, on Easter Tuesday. After spending the afternoon there, they returned in procession through the streets, threading grandy needles.”

References:

Nicholson, Cornelius, The Annals of Kendal, Whitaker & Co.: London 1861.

Horley Green Spa, Halifax, West Yorkshire

04/12/202010/07/2024 megalithix

Healing Well: OS Grid Reference – SE 10263 26561

Also Known as:

Horley Green Well
Spa Well

Archaeology & History

William Alexander’s 1840 sketch of the Spa house

The historian William Addison (1951), in his history on the subject, told how “the spas began as holy wells”; and although no direct accounts are left of early dedications here, the remnants of Mayday traditions tell us there were more archaic goings-on before the waters were taken by the aristocrats. Once it had been designated as a spa, the waters were covered and a typical Spa House constructed over them. From hereon, for more than a century, the waters were accessible only to those with money who wished their ailments to be treated.

Between the end of the 18th to the end of the 19th century, the Horley Green Spa was a very prominent ingredient in the history of Calderdale. A chalybeate or iron-bearing spring, its waters were directed into a large underground cistern covered by metal. Thomas Garnett (1790) was the first to write about it, telling us:

“The Horley Green water is quite pellucid—sparkles when poured out of one glass into another—and has a sharp, aluminous, styptic taste, not unlike ink. The taste is not unpleasant when the water is taken from the springhead and drank immediately.”

He went on to espouse the waters to be good in healing bone and rheumatic diseases, giving many first-hand accounts from people in Yorkshire and beyond who used the waters here with apparent success, including one case of curing diabetes! Its reputation was later reinforced in a book by William Alexander (1840), who told us how,

“I unhesitatingly affirm that the Horley Green Spa possesses a very strong claim to be regarded as a powerful tonic and chalybeate.”

By the time those words were written, it had already gained a considerable reputation and many were those who’d received treatment.

A years after Alexander, the roving doctor A.B. Granville (1841) visited Horley Green—who described it as “a renowned steel-water Spa”. But at the same time he reported how its popularity had started to decline. But, via one Mr West, he did leave us with a greater chemical analysis of the Horley Green waters in an attempt, once more, to certify and prove its curative properties. Their results found the waters to possess, in varying quantities, lime, magnesia, silica, iron oxide, sulphur and silica—all of which further attributed the science of its medicinal actions. A number of case histories of the people cured here can be found in the works of Granville, Garnett and Alexander.

The well-house that stood here eventually fell into disuse. When it was eventually restored as someone’s home in the the late 20th century, the disused spring was found beneath the foundations, filled with stones.

Folklore

Horley Green’s spa well came about as a result of local people visiting the site around Beltane, probably for centuries before the aristocrats and early pharmacists took their hand to the place. But once the spa became renowned, people could only gather here “on the first Sundays in the month of May,” with Sunday being that legendary ‘day of the lord’ crap, to which the people would abide to save them from prosecution. It is obvious though that it had been used as a place of magick thanks to the snippets of lore which have found their way into local history books. We read how, at 6am, people gathered here, to such an extent that the roads were completely crowded. Those who arrived first were given bags of nuts: an archaic traditional motif found at many pre-christian wells in Britain. Occultists and ritual magickians amongst you will note the time when folk frequented the well, at 6am: the time when many nature-spirits are invoked for full effects. We find this time echoed in the ritual gatherings at Lady or St. Anne’s Well in Morley, just a few miles to the east.

References:

Addison, William, English Spas, Batsford: London 1951.
Alderson, Frederick, The Inland Resorts and Spas of Britain, David & Charles: Newton Abbot 1973.
Alexander, William, The Horley Green Mineral Water, Leyland & Son: Halifax 1840.
Alexander, William, “On the Mineral Springs of the Parish of Halifax,” in Proceedings Geological & Polytechnic Society, West Riding, Yorkshire, volume 1, Edward Baines: Leeds 1849.
Crabtree, John, Concise History of the Parish and Vicarage of Halifax, Hartley & Walker: Halifax 1836.
Garnett, Thomas, Experiments and Observations on the Horley-Green Spaw, near Halifax, George Nicholson: Bradford 1790.
Granville, A.B., Spas of England, Henry Colburn: London 1841.
Hembry, Phyllis, The English Spa 1560-1815, Athlone Press: London 1990.
Short, Thomas, The Natural, Experimental and Medicinal History of the Mineral Waters of Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, privately printed: London 1724.
Short, Thomas, A General Treatise on Various Cold Mineral Waters in England, privately printed: London 1765.