Monthly Archives: January 2019
Newsflash! Holy Well researcher finds possible lost holy well under their house!
Yes difficult to believe. This site hasn’t become Fakenews! As regular followers of this blog will know I do like to rediscover a lost holy or healing spring. But little did I think that I’d possibly find one literally under my very feet. That’s right and you didn’t miss read that! I am keeping some of the details like the exact location and other distinguishing features under wraps but hopefully you’ll agree in the fact it is a curious story…which like many stories about springs is still not the complete work and there is some supposition.
Well well well
When I moved into my house I discovered a large yellow plastic mat in the hall and lifting this there was a hole. Looking down with a torch I saw brick steps and a room. It was a cellar. A cellar which I didn’t know was there. Tentatively exploring I found a fair size room with brick arches and full of junk. Two things caught my attention one a hole at floor level and the other a bricked up doorway. Looking in the hole first it opened up to a chamber wide at the top and narrow at the bottom and carved into the sandstone rock – there was nothing in it but it was clearly a well – but this is not the well the post is about. It appeared to be a domestic well carved into the rock at some point. There appeared above to have been a framework to provide pump which would have gone to the outside above. It was a domestic well. Interesting and fairly unusual although locally there are a number taking advantage of the way in which water percolates through the sandstone stone
.
It was the bricked up doorway which interested me more. Fast forward a year and I decided to see what was behind the doorway. So we sledge hammered it!
What’s behind the wall?
So behind the wall there was a rectangular structure set in the ground. It was surrounded by large granite slabs it appears From what I can see, there was water on the bottom a fact proved by dipping a tape measure in with paper on it. It appeared also to be around two feet deep. What else could it be but a chamber containing a spring. A possible spring head. The bottom of this spring chamber is rock as it appears to have an uneven nature but it is difficult to see. This is to be expected the floor of the cellar is stone and so the cellar was probably build around a natural cave with a spring in one corner. Inside the chamber is a water appears a lining possibly in lead which was done to seal it no doubt. The brick chamber looks Georgian in nature but the fabric around the spring head appears to be much older than the wall and indeed it sits unsymmetrically for no reason over part of the basin. The whole chamber has a dark material on the walls which appears to be lead. A neighbour had informed me of two facts he knew of the house one that it was lead lined, here was the evidence, and the other there was a tunnel which went down into town providing a way of servants to reach the big houses. This was very unlikely but looking at it laterally was it lead lined to contain water and so was the chamber a conduit house and the tunnel did not provide servants but a service, a water service, for the houses, a conduit tunnel more likely.
Historical context
I must stress that there is no documentary evidence of a spring associated with the house. No ancient records. No well or spring marked on any map. No mention at all of any well least at all a holy one. However, I have been told by local historians that the church was situated by a spring in Anglo-Saxon times. A 1913 book of the town records discussing this Anglo-Saxon settlers:
“The new comers would find several beautiful springs rising to the west…and near to the foot of the hill, one being at the top of Church Lane. Round these springs, and by the streams flowing therefrom (where the main street now stands) they would clear the ground, build cabins chiefly of timber, and cultivate small strips of land, which would be gradually extended. Between the sites of the several springs they selected a spot on which they ultimately built a church, and it is pleasant to reflect that on that spot for a thousand years thanks and prayers have been offered to God for pardon and purity, peace and help, and every other blessing.”
Could this be the actual well? I spoke with the chairmen of the local history story who is convinced it is indeed the original spring of the town. What is the name I wonder? An picture taken in the local library states that the house is called St. Helens. This is unusual as the church across the road is called St Mary’s. Was it once called after St Helens? Unlikely. There is no evidence of a name change. But does it refer to the well. St Helen’s Wells are not uncommon. And often they indicate a pre-Christian origin.
There is clearly more to find out so hopefully I way get more information I was post further on this.
The abecedary of sacred springs of the world: Mexico’s sacred cenote
This year I am returning to my abdecary of holy wells and healings springs of the world I started in 2017. As Friar Diego de Landa observed in 1566 after visiting Chichen Itza:
“Into this well they have had, and then had, the custom of throwing men alive as a sacrifice to the gods, in times of draught, and they believed that they did not die though they never saw them again. They also threw into it a great many other things, like precious stones and things which they prized. And so, if this country had possessed gold, it would be this well that would have the great part of it.”
Alfred M. Tozzer (trans.), ed. Landa’s Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan
On the Yucatan peninsula, the limestone worn by millennia of the elements has created remarkable sink holes or cenotes that at Chichen Itza is known as the Cenote Sagrada, the sacred cenote or more disturbingly the Well of Sacrifice; an eerie and mysterious place but how true is it?
Site of sacrifice
Local tradition both Mayan and Spanish claim that before the Spanish settlements the Maya would sacrifice objects and human beings to placate Chaac the rain god. Ever keen to reveal the truth it was Edward Herbert Thompson who between 1904 to 1910 decided to dredge the bottom and revealed some interesting objects. Thompson was working through unstable times during the Mexican revolution and understandably perhaps some of the objects went missing before they were catalogued. His house was also burnt down during his time there consequently resulting in him losing notes.
Thompson is said to have bought the site and used a pulley system with a bucket. Although much of the early work involved clearing debris such as trees which hampered the procedure. The buckets would be removed and local people sifted through the water to find artefacts and categorise them accordingly. These objects according to Clemency Chase Coggins 1984 Cenote of Sacrifice: Maya Treasures from the Sacred Well at Chichen Itz were obsidian, wood, shells, bone cloth, rubber, pottery an flints as well as gold, jadeite, copal. Some of these materials were not native to the Yucatan peninsular suggesting that perhaps pilgrimages were made to the site and that it was an important cultural centre. Was there also evidence that some of the materials were purposely damaged before being thrown into it a common activity throughout the world to ‘kill’ the object before sacrificing it. What is interesting is the organic matter which was remarkably preserved particularly the wooden ones which indicated what weapons they sacrificed.
Thompson also decided to dive in 1909 into the Cenote but what with its unstable rocky bottom, loose trees and murky water, it was both hazardous and difficult to see. He was very produce that he was the last person to tread on the bottom of the Cenote adding:
“full of long narrow cracks, radiating from centers as if the glass bottom of a dish had been broken by a pointed instrument. We found down in the cracks and holes a grayish mud in which were imbedded the heavier gold objects, jades, and copper bells in numbers.”
Other excavations were subsequently less successful, the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (INAH) director William Folan in 1961 did find wooden ear flares with jade and turquoise mosac, a large chert knife, a gold sheathed bone with a wooden handle. The subsequent exploration of Norman Scott and Roman Pina-Chan in 1967-8 tried emptying the cenote and trying to clear the water. However, only 13 feet or so of water could be removed and it did not really clear.
What about the human sacrifice?
What of course interests archaeologists is the human sacrificial remains. The bones found in the site had marks that concurred with wounds associated with sacrifice These sacrifices consisted of both male and females, children and infants Guillermo de Anda (2007) Sacrifice and Ritual Body Mutilation in Postclassical Maya Society: Taphonomy of the Human Remains from Chichén Itzá’s Cenote Sagrado”. In Vera Tiesler and Andrea Cucina (eds.). New Perspectives on Human Sacrifice and Ritual Body Treatments in Ancient Maya Society.of the University of Yucatán, states that Mayan mythology emphasises that children 6 to 12 were often male being captured or purchased. Those kidnaped were collected whilst parents toiled fields, or via battle. They were more often than not killed prior to being thrown and what made this site special that it was a sacrificial one as others were used for domestic supplies. Perhaps the last person to witness this was Franciscan leader Diego de Landa as he claimed to have witnessed live sacrifices:
“ the custom of throwing men alive as a sacrifice to the gods, in times of draught, and they believed that they did not die though they never saw them again.”
Guest blog post: Ffynnon Leinw – Holy Well or natural wonder by Tristan Gray Hulse (part two)
It is a pleasure to present Tristan Gray Hulse’s second part of his monograph on Ffynnon Leinw
On the Tuesday of Holy Week 1188 Giraldus and Archbishop Baldwin rode from Bangor to Rhuddlan Castle, where they were entertained for the night. On Wednesday Baldwin preached the Crusade in Rhuddlan, before saying Mass in St Asaph cathedral, after which his party rode on to spend the night at Basingwerk Abbey, near Holywell. On the Thursday they rode to Chester. At some point (Giraldus’ mention is made between his accounts of Tuesday evening and the events of Wednesday, so that he probably heard it at Rhuddlan on Tuesday night) they were told of a spring not far from Rhuddlan which ebbed and flowed twice daily with the tides, but which was also liable to rise and fall frequently throughout the day. Humphrey Llwyd identified Giraldus’ unnamed spring with an unnamed ebbing-and-flowing well in Cilcain parish; adding that the spring was observed to dry up at a certain time of the year. Llwyd’s identification of Giraldus’ spring with the Cilcain well was followed by David Powel, who named the latter as Ffynnon Leinw; and Camden followed Powel in locating an ebbing-and-flowing spring in the parish of Cilcain, without naming it. Richard Mostyn and, after him, Edward Lhwyd, suggested that Ffynnon Asa, in Cwm parish, as being closer to Rhuddlan, was a more plausible match for Giraldus’ spring; also noting that Ffynnon Leinw no longer ebbed and flowed.
Giraldus’ topographical notices in the Itinerarium were almost entirely anecdotal, apparently dependent upon the casual comments of his hosts; the hit-and-miss character of this kind of information-gathering can be assessed from the fact that, although he spent a night at Basingwerk, he has no account of St Winefride’s Well, Holywell, although its fame was by then long established in north-east Wales and the northern Marches – its absence is best explained by assuming that no-one happened to mention the Holywell well to Giraldus during his few brief hours at Basingwerk.
Ffynnon Leinw and Ffynnon Asa were not the only ebbing-and-flowing wells in Wales. Giraldus had mentioned another one in his Itinerarium Cambriae, at Dinefwr (I, 10: Giraldus 1908, 74). Francis Jones wrote that ebbing and flowing was “a claim common to many Welsh wells”. (Jones 1954, 53: Jones noticed the claim for a Ffynnon Fednant, in Caernarfonshire – ib. 154; Llandyfeisant Well, Carmarthenshire, i.e., the Dinefwr well – p. 171; Ff. Asa and Ff. Leinw, in Flintshire – 178, 180; Ff. Maen y Milgi, Llandrillo, in Merioneth – 193; two wells at Chepstow, Monmouthshire – 196; and St Non’s Well, at St Davids, Carncwn Well, at Newport, Ff. Lygaid, at St Davids, and Pencw Wells, at Goodwick, all in Pembrokeshire – 210, 212, 213, 216.) James Rattue (1995, 114) notes that such wells were reported in England, and were particularly attractive to antiquarian writers such as Camden; on p. 117 he quotes Camden quoting an ode by Sir John Stradling to an ebbing-and-flowing well at Newton, in Glamorganshire. (This is St John’s Well, Newton; Jones 1954, 183, listed the well, but missed the ebbing-and-flowing claim, and Stradling’s poem.)
Less than two miles from Rhuddlan, Ffynnon Asa is a plausible identification for Giraldus’ spring; Ffynnon Leinw, rather less so. But, given the sheer number of wells for which such claims were made, it cannot be certain that Giraldus’ spring should be identified with either Ffynnon Asa or Ffynnon Leinw. What is certain is that the ubiquity of Camden’s Britannia guaranteed that a well in Cilcain parish – more exactly identified by Powel with Ffynnon Leinw – was for centuries identified as being fed by an ebbing-and-flowing spring.
So far as I am aware, the claim of regular twice-daily ebbing and flowing has never been established for any of the many springs for which the claim has been made in the past. What is probably being witnessed by such claims is a common but irregular fluctuation in water levels created by sustained periods of more or less rainfall, observed casually, from time to time, by persons who noted different water levels each time they had cause to visit the well, and invoked the example of the universal regular tidal ebbing and flowing as an explanation of a local phenomenon. In certain instances it may be that one has to do with a periodic spring, dry for part of the year, but returning after prolonged rainfall; certainly this seems to be what Humphrey Llwyd was recording for the Cilcain well.
Flintshire is famous for its wells, which owe their existence to the Carboniferous Limestone that constitutes its central plain. This rock is porous and the water percolates it till it comes in contact with impermeable shale or clay, where it accumulates and finds its way again to the surface through some of the many fissures … Ffynnon Leinw, “the flowing well,” in Cilcain parish, was at one time an intermittent spring, flowing at regular intervals, owing to syphon action, but it has long lost this peculiarity (Edwards 1914, 25, 27).
This and related phenomena are common in the local limestone landscape. Numbers of the rivers and streams flowing through Cilcain parish run underground for some distance at certain times of the year; as the Parochialia noted:
All their rivulets dive. [It names the Alun, “underground abt 3 quarters of a mile” (it sinks at a place below Cilcain village called Hesp Alun, “the dry Alun”); the Fechlas, “underground hlf a mile it breaks forth at a place therefore call’d tarth y Dŵr” (Tardd y Dŵr, “eruption, or issue, of water”); and the Cain, “dives for hlf a mile more and so to Alen within the P’ish”.] They have severall other Rills that dive (Lhwyd 1909, 80-1).
(The overflow from Ffynnon Leinw drains into the Fechlas; Tardd y Dŵr is two-thirds of a mile west of the well: SJ 175 675. Tardd y Dŵr and Ffynnon Leinw are both in the former Cilcain township of Dolfechlas.) The places of their re-emergence would all exhibit greater or lesser volumes of water, depending on the rainfall. With regard to Ffynnon Leinw, more careful observation (as suggested by Richard Mostyn and Pennant) would have cleared up the popular suggestion of any twice-daily ebbing and flowing.
The suggestion here is that Ffynnon Leinw, before its final drying-up as a result of mining locally (cf. RCAHM 1912, 16; Davies 1959, 65 – if indeed it has really dried up; it would seem still to flow periodically: cf. Davis 2003, 71), was a periodic spring whose flow varied with the rainfall, and which often ceased to flow altogether during drier periods of the year. This idea is perhaps reinforced by the name of the well. The element leinw has caused placename scholars a number of problems (cf. e.g. Davies 1959, 65), but it may simply relate in some way to the verb llanw or llenwi, “to fill”, and to the masculine noun llanw, “influx”. (The ll > l is simply the regular lenition, following the feminine noun ffynnon, “well”; in just this way the personal names Mair and Mihangel mutate to give Ffynnon Fair and Ffynnon Fihangel. ) It is in this sense that Pennant understood the element, when he translated Ffynnon Leinw as “the flowing well”. Professor Hywel Wyn Owen has commented on the name:
The form leinw cannot be explained as a noun or adjective. Most Welsh speakers would know leinw from Psalms 84.6 ‘y glaw a leinw y llynnau’ [“the rain also filleth the pools” – AV]. That was in the old translation … The Psalms use leads me to suspect that the well was originally y ffynnon a leinw ‘the well which fills’. In time the relative pronoun was omitted leaving us with y ffynnon leinw > Ffynnon Leinw (pers. comm. to TGH, 14 December 2015).
The name would thus seem to reference the sudden filling of a well with the recommencement of a periodic spring after heavy rain. It would seem not to carry any inevitable sense of a regular ebbing and flowing like the sea’s tides, but only of flowing; though doubtless the secondary use of the noun llanw for “the flow of the tide” would facilitate any popular misinterpretation of such periodic springs as regularly ebbing and flowing.
References
Anon., Cambrian Traveller’s Guide, ed. 1, Stourport: George Nicholson, 1808; ed. 2, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1813
Anon., “The Parish of Mold”, 3 parts, The Cambro-Briton vol. 1, London: 1819, 136-43, 179-84, 298-300
Anon., “Extracts from a MS of Ancient Date, giving some Customs and Usages in North Wales”, Archaeologia Cambrensis 40 (1885) 150-6
Anon., “Obituary, The Rev. Elias Owen of Llan y Blodwel”, Archaeologia Cambrensis 56 (1901) 322-4
Browne, Sir Thomas, ed. Geoffrey Keynes, Selected Writings, London: Faber and Faber, 1970
Camden, William, ed., Anglica, Normannica, Hibernica, Cambrica, a veteribus scripta [&c], Frankfurt: 1603
Camden, William, Britannia; sive Florentissimorum Regnorum, Angliae, Scotiae, Hiberniae, & Insularum adiacentium ex intima antiquitate Chorographica descriptio, Frankfurt: Johann Bringer, 1616
Camden, William, rev. Edmund Gibson, Britannia: or a Chorographical Description of Great Britain and Ireland … Translated into English, with Additions and Improvements, second ed., vol. 2, London: Awnsham Churchill, 1722
Carlisle, Nicholas, A Topographical Dictionary of the Dominion of Wales, London: 1811
Cartwright, Jane, Feminine Sanctity and Spirituality in Medieval Wales, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008
Cathrall, William, The History of North Wales [&c], vol. 2, Manchester: 1828
Cox, Phil, “The Lost Chapel of St Leonard”, 1970: accessed 10/12/2015 on the Caer Alyn Archaeological and Heritage website, http://caeralyn.org
Davies, Ellis, Flintshire Place-Names, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1959
Davis, Paul, Sacred Springs: In Search of the Holy Wells and Spas of Wales, Llanfoist: Blorenge Books, 2003
Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400-c.1580, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992
Edwards, J,M., Flintshire (Cambridge County Geographies), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914
Evans, J., The Beauties of England and Wales: or, Original Delineations, Topographical, Historical, and Descriptive, of each County, vol. 17 (North Wales), London: J. Harris [&c], 1812
Farmer, David Hugh, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, ed. 5, Oxford: University Press, 2003
Giraldus Cambrensis, tr. Richard Colt Hoare, The Itinerary through Wales and The Description of Wales, London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1908
Gray, Madeleine, Images of Piety: The iconography of traditional religion in late medieval Wales (BAR British Series 316), Oxford: Archaeopress, 2000
Gruffydd, Eirlys a Ken Lloyd, Ffynhonnau Cymru. Cyfrol 2: Ffynhonnau Caernarfon, Dinbych, Y Fflint a Môn, Llanrwst: Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 1999
Gruffydd, Ken Lloyd, “The Manor & Marcher Lordship of Mold during the Early Middle Ages, 1039-1247”, Ystrad Alun: Journal of the Mold Civic Society 1 (Christmas 2000) 3-21
Hooke, R[obert], Micrographia: or some Physiological Description of Minute Bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon, London: James Allestry, 1667
Hooper, Richard, ed., The Complete Works of Michael Drayton, vols 1-3 (Poly-Olbion), London: John Russell Smith, 1876
Jacobus de Voragine, tr. William Granger Ryan, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, vol. 2, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995
Jones, Francis, The Holy Wells of Wales, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1954
Jones, J. Colin, Gresford Village and Church: The history of a border settlement, Wrexham: J. Colin Jones, 1995
Lewis, Samuel, A Topographical Dictionary of Wales, ed. 3, vol. 1, London: S. Lewis and Co., 1848
Lloyd, John Edward, and R.T. Jenkins, eds, The Dictionary of Welsh Biography down to 1940, London: The Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1959
Lloyd, Nesta, “The Correspondence of Edward Lhuyd and Richard Mostyn”, Flintshire Historical Society Publications 25 (1971-2) 31-61
Lhuyd, Humfredus, Commentarioli Britannicae Descriptionis Fragmentum, Cologne: Johann Birckman, 1572
Lhwyd, Edward, ed. Rupert H. Morris, Parochialia being a Summary of Answers to “Parochial Queries” [&c], part 1, London: The Cambrian Archaeological Association, 1909
Morris, John, ed./transl., Nennius: British History and The Welsh Annals, London and Chichester: Phillimore, 1980
Owen, Elias, 1899: “Ffynon Leinw, an Ebbing and Flowing Well”, chapter in The Holy Wells of North Wales, unpublished manuscript NLW 3290D
Pennant, Thomas, Tours in Wales, vol. 2, London: Wilkie and Robinson [&c], 1810
Powel, David, Pontici Virunnii Britannicae Historiae libri VI; Itinerarium Cambriae, Cambriae Descriptio; De Britannica Historia recte intelligenda Epistola, London: Henry Denham and Ralph Newbury, 1585
Rattue, James, The Living Stream: Holy Wells in Historical Context, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1995
RCAHM 1912, 1914, 1925 = An Inventory of The Ancient Monuments of Wales and Monmouthshire. II. – County of Flint; IV. – County of Denbigh; and VII.- County of Pembroke, London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1912, 1914 and 1925
Rees, Eiluned, and Gwyn Walters, “The Dispersion of the Manuscripts of Edward Lhuyd”, The Welsh History Review 7, no. 2 (Dec. 1974) 148-78
Richter, Michael, Giraldus Cambrensis: The Growth of the Welsh Nation, rev. ed., Aberystwyth: The National Library of Wales, 1976
Schwyzer, Philip, ed., Humphrey Llwyd “The Breviary of Britain” with selections from “The History of Cambria”, London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2011
Spalding, Ruth, The Improbable Puritan: A Life of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 1605-1675, London: Faber & Faber, 1975
Spalding, Ruth, ed., The Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 1605-1675, Oxford: Oxford University Press/The British Academy, 1990
Speed, John, The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain, London: 1611/12
Stephens, Meic, ed., The New Companion to the Literature of Wales, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998
Walsham, Alexandra, The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity, and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland, Oxford: University Press, 2011
Whitelocke, R.H., Memoirs, Biographical and Historical, of Bulstrode Whitelocke [&c], London: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1860
[Williams, John] Ab Ithel, “Holy Wells”, Archaeologia Cambrensis 1 (1846) 50-4
Williams, Moses. Humfredi Llwyd, Armigeri, Britannicae Descriptionis Commentariolum [&c], London: William Bowyer, 1731
Wynne, Glenys, Cilcain, Mold: Cilcain W.I., 1944
holyandhealingwells 