The Weir garden is a delightful riverside garden owned by the National Trust. Many people naturally visit it for the gardens but it is the unusual and possibly unique relic that can be found.

Before entering the main section of the garden is a curious octagonal cistern lying close to the path on the left This was discovered when some work people were digging for a new water pipe in 1891 during a period of drought. Whilst removing earth for a trench they discovered the site. Unfortunately, several of the upper stones were removed before its significance was realized and the placed back. This did mean that the sections were replaced but in the wrong parts and this explains the tanks less than perfect outline. When it was first discovered the excavators believed it to be a medieval structure this was despite the discovery of tesserae plugging a central opening in the lower stone. The remains of a wooden water calcified for centuries which used to direct the flow of the spring above and angled by about 45°from above. Elsewhere were pieces of broken tile, tesserae and green painted wall plaster. More substantial remains of buttresses can still be seen in the river below.

Local legend?

Associated with the site and gardens is a legend recorded by Jonathan Sant in his 1994 Healing wells of Herefordshire. The legend records that two figures haunt the well and area. One was a Roman Soldier and the other ancient Briton women said to have been his lover. It is said that his general sent him to the well with a message for a lady but alas he say his Briton lower saw them meeting at the well and suspecting him for infidelity and thus threw herself into the river. He saw her do this and jumped in after her. They both sadly drowned

Once a year it is said that the ghosts appear and fill the well with their tears and according to Sant its waters were said to have magical powers for lovers.

All this is possibly Victorian romanticisms post the discovery of the well. Jonathan Sant (1994) also states that the well was traditionally said to have been filled in by order of the bishop of Hereford but he does not claim why or give the source. Does this suggest that it was used as a pagan site? Or are we talking about a protestant Bishop stopping Catholic practices at a holy well? None of these legends appear to have attracted the attention of either Ella Mary Leather’s The Folklore of Herefordshire or Roy Palmers The folklore of Hereford and Worcester.

A local water deity?

It is possible that the ruins represent a high status third or fourth century Roman villa which contained a Romano-British shrine dedicated to water nymphs called a nymphaeum. A clue to a local deity may come from the Roman altar stone found in 1821 beneath the Billiard Hall near the Hereford library may have originally come from the Weir Gardens and of what can be read:

DEO SILVANO

As Silvano was a Roman God of the countryside it would make sense to have them worshipped by the river Wye. It is possible that if the legend is not a Victorian embellishment that records folk memory of the deities.

A curious site and possibly one of the only truly surviving Roman water shrines in situ. It may have been Christianised but all memory of that has been forgotten. Hopefully one day more can be found.