In preparation for a volume on Holy and healing wells of Norfolk, a county with a high number of interesting and surviving sites, I was in North Norfolk doing research. Of course this area of Norfolk is dominated by the Walsingham wells, more of perhaps in a latter post, but I would like to focus on three less well known sites.

Many people visit the romantic gate house ruins of Burnham Norton’s Carmelite Friary, built in 1241, very few people would tbe able to tell you about the holy well. Described by the Procceedings of the Norfolk Archaeology as where the:

 the monks walked to the wishing wells nearby to drink the cool water, which is claimed to make wishes come true.

These appear to be the same as that marked as Our Lady’s Well on the 1880s OS. The The spring has nine or ten sections of stone work around it as it arises close to the edge in the bed of the gravel stream. It is probable, especially as some of the stone work appears worked and may have come from the friary or was constructed by the friary although it does not seam as substantial as one would expect. Nearer the road is a rectangular stone lined ‘tank’ which may be associated with the spring and indeed may be it, as the older OS maps it is difficult to identify the exact site.

I failed to find Lady Bone Well, at Coxford. A site said to be near the remains of the Augustinian abbey  and obviously its water source. One would assume a name after Our Lady, although Bone would be difficult to explain. Indeed, its name is said to be after a lady of the Priory who was drowned in the well by the priests of the priory; an odd lesson which I have been unable to date but is doubtlessly Reformation in origin. A visit by NAU in 1978 found the surrounding wall in reasonably good condition, approximately 30cm high and 1.8m in diameter, is broken in three places. Its water reaching ground level and its overflow joining River Wensum some 27m to the south. However, by 1990 it was thought to be in poor condition. and indeed my visit failed to find any evidence of a springhead at the site and it appears to have become very overgrown and lost in a marshy area.

The small village of Sedgeford does have a Lady Well, although only marked in blue italics on the current OS giving some doubt to its age. Little is known of the well, but I was told of processions that have gone to the well and one would expect that its water was used by filling the church font. Little appears to be recorded of this spring but its location not far from the parish church is significant. The spring flows from the bank forming a chalky stream and into a large pool. Significantly perhaps there is a large stone beside it.

More of Norfolk holy wells and springs later….

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