Healing Well (destroyed): Os Grid Reference – NS 5931 6500
Also Known as:
West Port Well
Archaeology & History
Once found near the old crossroads of Trongate, Arygle Street and Stockwell Street, the Trongate Well is another of old Glasgow’s lost sites, piped-off and added to the city’s water system sometime in the 19th century. A pity, as the fresh water from here was highly regarded (moreso than the modern stuff with its chlorine and other unnecessary additives). The well could be found where the Highland Gaelic Society built their own public house and, as a result, was very popular with local folk. It was,
“Opposite the old Black Bull in Trongate…afterwards covered in, which was famous in the palmy days of cold punch, and which is alluded to in Cyril Thornton as ‘the West Port Well.’” (MacGeorge 1880)
Old cattle markets were held here and MacGeorge (1880) wrote how it was a very popular and favourite place in its day, “surrounded by large numbers of the town’s people waiting a supply.”
The old Black Bull pub was much used by drovers and across from it was the old draw well, whose waters were of such renown that they were described in the verse, The Lament of Capt Paton, thus:
“Or if a bowl was mentioned,
The Captain he would ring,
And bid Nelly to the West Port,
And a stoup of water bring;
Then he would mix the genuine stuff,
As they made it long ago,
With limes that on his property
In Trinidad did grow.
O! we ne’er shall taste the like
Of Captain Pateon’s punch no mo’!”
Healing Well (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NS 594 645
Archaeology & History
Mentioned briefly in James MacKinlay’s (1893) classic survey, this site was an ancient draw-well sunk near the old city centre but, like the ancient Moot Hill close by, has long since been destroyed. It is described amidst Andy MacGeorge’s (1880) historical survey of the ancient wells where he wrote:
“There was another…at the Barras Yet, near the port of that name at the foot of Saltmarket. It is mentioned in a minute of council in 1664, which ordains that ‘in respect of the heighting of the calsay at the Barrazet the well there be heightit twa stones higher round about, for preservation of childerin falling therein.’”
Although its exact whereabouts is not known, the proximity of the old fountain known as the Sir William Collins Memorial Fountain 100 yards east into the Glasgow Green Park at the bottom of the Saltmarket, might have robbed the Barrasyett Well of its water supply to gain existence.
Many ways to get here, via the M8 or the B806. Just get to the Glasgow Fort shopping centre on the northern edge of Easterhouse, above Provan Hall. At the T-junction where the road from the Fort meets Auchinlea Road, note the sign saying ‘Todds Well’. Walk along the winding path, keeping to the lower side, and as you swing round the small hill, keep your eyes peeled for the small burn emerging from the shrubs 10-20 yards off the track. That’s the place.
Archaeology & History
Follow the track past the sign
Thankfully this site still exists and the waters—slow though they flow—are quite drinkable (us lot drank here anyway!). It was illustrated on the early OS-map of the area as the ‘Back o’ Brae Well’—no doubt gaining its name from the surveyors who took the directions to the place as its title! At the point where the spring water emerges from the Earth, very overgrown remains of low walling marks the opening well-head, and a number of larger stones mark the course of the tiny burn as you walk towards the track (though these could be more recent).
Getting ready for a drink!The slow-flowing water source
Thought to derive its name from the old word todd, meaning ‘fox’ (Grant 1973), a variant on the word may have meant that children’s games were played here (but without a confirmation of this in local folklore, we should urge caution). As well as being used by local people, the water from Todds Well was one of the places used by them there ‘rich’ folk who lived at nearby Provan House.
This old well, named after Queen Mary (one of at least three dedicated to her in Lanarkshire), was illustrated on the earliest Ordnance Survey map of the area in 1864. Local tradition tells us that the site gained its name when the great Mary Queen of Scots visited this old healing well, amidst a period when she stayed at Provan Hall 1½ mile away. Both she and her horse stopped and drank here for refreshment.
Site of Mary’s WellMary’s Well on 1864 OS-map
In the 19th and early 20th century, the well was converted into a pump and supplied the water to a row of cottages that used to be here. When we visited the site yesterday, no trace of the pump, nor any spring of water could be found. It seems that a huge pile of industrial crap has been piled on top of the well, then trees planted to give the impression that Nature has taken back the place. The well seems to have been completely destroyed (the photo here shows the spot where the well should be, just a few yards into the young trees). Due to this site being an important part of Scotland’s heritage, its ignorant destruction must be condemned.
Acknowledgements: Big thanks to the team – Nina Harris, Paul Hornby and Frank Mercer – for their work here. And to Dan Holdsworth and John Bestow for their additional input.
Healing Well (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NS 5974 6534
Also Known as:
Meadow Well
Archaeology & History
Deanside Well ‘pump’ in 1857
This little-known well—destroyed about two hundred years ago—was said to be one of the finest of all of the water supplies in the Glasgow district in pre-industrial days. The Glasgow historian Andy MacGeorge (1880) told it to be “a spring which was then, and for long afterwards, in great repute.” It was described as early as 1304 CE in a grant by Robert, bishop of Glasgow, allowing the christians to take water from the well and into their convent. The Latin transcript told:
“Noveritis Ros intuita caritatis, Dedisse fratribus Predicatoribus de Glasgu, Fontem quendam qui dicitur Meduwel in loco qui dicitur Denside scaturientem, in perpetuum conducendum in claustrum dictorum fratrum, ad usus necessarios eorundem” (Meaning, “Know ye that I Rosh, of charity, Among His brethren shared with the Preaching Friars of Glasgow, the gushing fountain called Meadow Well or Deanside as the place is called, to the cloisters is said to meet the needs” of the monks.”)
There is the possibility that the well was deemed as ‘holy’ due to it being of vital use to the bishop and monks, but I can find no record of it being ‘blessed’ as such; and the exact site of the bishop’s convent has been lost to history. In 1574 the “Deynside Well” needed cleaning due to people clogging up the waters with earth and stones; and sometime in the 18th century the spring of water was turned into a draw-well.
A northern antiquarian by the name of ‘ Senex’ (real name, Robert Reid) visited the Deanside Well at the end of the 18th century, telling of its whereabouts:
“In the year 1789 I had occasion daily to mount and descend the Deanside Brae, upon business, so that the state of the place at that date is quite familiar to me. The whole of the Deanside Brae was then vacant ground, as is shown in the old Maps of Glasgow. The Deanside or Meadow Well was situated in a meadow at the west end of Grayfriars’ (or Bun’s) Wynd, close to the footpath leading up to the Rottenrow; it is now on the street, at 88 George Street, opposite to the lane leading into Shuttle Street. The Deanside Well was then in a rural spot, the whole lands on the west, as far as Partick, being garden grounds and com fields.
“In Stuart’s Views the lonely foot passage up the Deanside Brae, to the Rottenrow, is very distinctly shown. The well stood at the south extremity of the said footpath, about the centre of the wynd.”
‘Senex’ also told that an ancient fair was held in “an enclosure” at the northwest corner of Shuttle Street, close to the Deanside Well.
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.
This curiously-named and long lost well would almost have us believe that the Greek poet and philosopher himself was a-wandering in this neck of the woods. But that sadly wasn’t the case. It seems to have been mentioned just once in Looe’s early Town Books:
“In 1621 that part of West Looe Down which lieth on the West part of the Homer Well, was let to rent, for two crops, at 6s.8d. per acre”
In Courtney & Couch’s (1880) Cornish dialect work, the word homer is said to mean “homeward”; this is also echoed in Wright’s (1905) magnum opus. It seems to imply that it was a drinking well used by folk traveling the short distance from Looe village, across the river and onto or over West Looe Down towards their cottage or farmhouse; akin to a refreshing resting place halfway home, so to speak. Sometimes the word homeward can be taken to simply mean “at home,” in which case it would suggest that the Well was simply next to someone’s house. We may never know…
References:
Bond, Thomas, Topographical and Historical Sketches of the Boroughs of East and West Looe, J. Nichols: London 1823.
Courtney M.A. & Couch, T.Q., Glossary of Words of Use in Cornwall, English Dialect Society: London 1880.
Wright, Joseph, English Dialect Dictionary – volume 3, Henry Frowde: London 1905.
Go up the road alongside the Dollar Burn, turning right, up the steep hill as if heading to the Wizard’s Stone and the impressive Castleton monolith, a mile further along. Before reaching the Wizard’s Stone, keep your eyes peeled on the right for the street-name, ‘Moir’s Well’. From here, walk up the road less than another 100 yards and till you reach the water-cover.
Archaeology & History
Site of the old Muir’s Well
There is little known about any history of this now-covered old well, halfway up the steep slope towards Lochy Launds. It was noted by Ordnance Survey in 1861 and subsequently published on the earliest OS-map a few years later. It was obviously a wayside well for those venturing up the steep hill and used to have an old stone trough into which the waters ran. Although we don’t know for certain, the etymology of the well probably comes from the surname Muir, which according to William Gibson (1883) was common in the old village.
People living in the houses below here, told us that after heavy rains their gardens become very boggy, which is probably due to the sub-surface water from Muir’s Well. Tis good to know that the waters are still finding their way out!
Take the Heptonstall road up from Hebden Bridge, going round the village (not into it) and head through Slack and onto Colden. Just as the road begins to go downhill to Colden, note the small single-track road on your right called Edge Road. Go on here for a good mile until it becomes a dirt-track and there, on your left, is the half-run-down old farmhouse called New Edge. Just yards past it, off to the right by the trackside, you’ll see this large copper-coloured stone basin oozing with the same-coloured liquid.
Archaeology & History
New Edge Chalybeate, above Colden
This is one of what Thomas Short (1724) called “the ten thousand chalybeats”, or iron-bearing springs, inhabiting the Yorkshire uplands — but he didn’t include this site in his huge survey. But it’s a beauty amongst chalybeates, as a visit here clearly shows! The well is one of two found on either side of the old building known as New Edge (as contrasted with Old Edge, a little further along the lane), and its waters trickle gently from the old stone trough.
The waters are undoubtedly enriched with large amounts of iron, as the photo here shows, giving the waters clear medicinal value. In tasting them, not only do the waters give you that copper-coloured hue, but you can clearly taste the minerals in the water. As with other iron-bearing springs, the water from the New Edge spring is good for the blood, good for anæmia, loss of energy and a low immune system.
References:
Short, Thomas, The Natural, Experimental and Medicinal History of the Mineral Waters of Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, privately printed: London 1734.
