Tag: Lechlade-on-Thames

Slaughter’s Well, Lechlade-on Thames, Gloucestershire

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Healing Well (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – SU 215 995

Archaeology & History

Not listed in the field-name surveys of the town, the name Slaughter Well was obviously a folk-name given to it by local people.  The place was mentioned in an unpublished manuscript that Adin Williams’ (1888) managed to lay his hands on, where it was mentioned in relation to the missing pyramidal Market Cross.  Its waters were “said to be medicinal.”  The name of the well was said to derive from a battle here between Oliver Cromwell’s men and the Royalists.  At this place,

“an officer was shot, and this incident gave the name ‘Slaughter’ to the well.”

References:

  1. Williams, Adin, Lechlade: Being the History of the Town, Manor and Estates, The Priory and the Church, E.W. Savory: Cirencester 1888.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Market Cross, Lechlade, Gloucestershire

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Cross (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – SU 214 995

Archaeology & History

In days of olde, Charles Pooley (1868) told us that “an old cross formerly stood in the Market-place” in the centre of the town where the old crossroads meet—as was customary for crosses and maypoles—just outside the church of St. Lawrence.  Pyramidal in form, it was mentioned in an old manuscript cited by Adin Williams (1888), which told us,

“Leland saith that in his days there was a Piramid of Stone at ye west end of ye Church, whose foundations are to be seen near Slaughter’s Well, which is said to be medicinal water.”

And although we don’t know when the cross was erected, we know when it was destroyed.  Williams again tells us:

“About 1770, Sir Jacob Wheate pulled down this cross.  He is said to have taken the stones to the house he was building.”

References:

  1. Pooley, Charles, Notes on the Old Crosses of Gloucestershire, Longmans Green: London 1868.
  2. Williams, Adin, Lechlade: Being the History of the Town, Manor and Estates, The Priory and the Church, E.W. Savory: Cirencester 1888.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian