All images and text are Copyright 2003 Terry Faull.

The idea that some springs or wells of water are spiritually important places and deserving our protection would, I suspect, be dismissed by many people today. Yet water worship is of great antiquity; Holy Wells across the British Islands have been visited for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years by those in search of predictions about the future, for healing and as places of veneration. Much has been written on this subject. Some studies hold that Holy Wells were originally pagan sites which were re-labelled with the coming of Christianity; others claim that most of them are just  natural water sources which some ancient landowner or church authority named after a favourite saint as a way of selling indulgencies to a superstitious people.

The truth is that we cannot now be certain or fully understand why some sites became important places of local pilgrimage. Much so called evidence comes from documents which were themselves written long after the events described and list matters which were already historical; other information is based on folk traditions or place names both of which are subject to interpretation and change. But no matter, the arguments about the absolute integrity of sources can be left for academic debate elsewhere; what is certain is that all across Europe, the tradition of the Holy Well   is of great antiquity and has been observed up to modern times.

Holy Wells are some of the very few places about which we can be certain that the ordinary people of earlier times thought  important and visited generation after generation. In many cases, the site of the Holy Well is older than the parish church and such places are amongst the oldest continuously used sites to be found in the British countryside.