In 2018 I took over the Source Archive which digitally stored the articles from the Source Journal (old series) established by Mark Valentine, Source (new series) edited by Roy Fry and Tristan Gray Hulse and the Living Spring journal established by Richard Penderick who had held onto the archive at Bath University. 

The archive has been an invaluable resource but the observant would not know that certain articles were missing and when I  took over the archive I stated that I would try to make these available digitally for the first time since in this month’s example since 1994.

Thus at the 10th anniversary of the Insearchofholyandhealingsprings blog site I had decided to complete the task. The first article is a lengthy one so I have decided to divide it into two parts. 

This week is a transcription of an article missing from the second of the new series of Source (the first missing) by Professor Charles Thomas:

Antony Charles Thomas, CBE DL FBA FSA FSA Scot was a British historian and archaeologist who was Professor of Cornish Studies at Exeter University, and the first Director of the Institute of Cornish Studies, from 1971 until his retirement in 1991. He was recognised as a Bard of the Cornish Gorseth with the name Gwas Godhyan in 1953. He sadly died in 2016. Again the copyright belongs to the author I shall remove if anyone from his estate requests so. 

Professor Charles Thomas

Holy Wells of Cambourne

extracted from Christian antiquities of Cambourne H.E Warne Ltd 1967 pp120-6

by kind permission of the author

Originally published in Source – The Holy wells journal New Series No 2 Winter 1994

Over most of Cornwall, the word ‘well’ is used to describe both artificial-dug vertitical shaft, and a natural spring, whether flowing or static. The traditional ‘holy wells’ of Cornwall are seldom more than a foot or so deep, and can be nothing more than water issuing from the ground or from a rock. In Cornish, a single word normally surfices for both well and spring (OE funten, MC fenten, ModC fenton cf OB funton, ModB feunteum) derived form the Latin fontana, and apparently superseding some such purely Celtic word as that represented by the OC pol ‘pool, well’ The strict term for a dug well, Mod C pyth dialect peeth seems to be confined to domestic usage and does not occur in place names as far as is known.

The wells described in this chapter are all of some age, and have some claim to be regarded as ‘holy’ or ‘lucky’ in the broad sense, while at least three of them are, or were, thought to possess medicinal virtues. In no way can this be claimed to be a complete catalogue of which wells in the parish and there must be many others unknown to the writer – indeed unknown to anyone except the few people who live near them. The selection discussed below nevertheless forms a good representative group, such as may be found in most parishes in west Cornwall. These wells are shown on the map, and their eight-figure National Grid references are listed at the end of this chapter, as many of these wells have never been distinguished on the Ordnance Survey sheets.

1. Vincent’s Well This is a copious natural spring which forms one of the sources of the Red River. It can be found, with some difficulty, on the so called Bolenowe Moors (actually a marsh with heavy scrub undergrowth), and is still esteemed in Bolenowe as being of great antiquity, and as possessing water of healing qualities. An old and choked lane leads to it from the farmlands of the Forrest tenement of Illogan, and the well itself seems to be just on the Ilogan side of the Camborne-Illogan bound. The spring issues out from under some horizontal granite slabs. Charles Henderson visited vincent;s well in the 1930s, though he confused it with fenton Io (no. 10 below) He wrote ‘ It is famous throughout the district for its healing qualities especially with regard to the eyes. One old man asserted that doctors had frequently taken some of its waters away to London (this claim is repeated to the writer at Bolenowe in 1962 by several ladies of the village)’…The spring is most difficult to find and approach….it is a fine clear copious spring issuing from the ground, and there are no traces of any building covering it….’Vincent’s Well must be carefully distinguished from ‘Vincent’s Shute’, the name of a spring and watercourse behind the house in Bolenowe village occupied (1962) by the Vincent family. In the case of Vincent’s Well, the Vincent part is probably, as in field-names, a corruption of the Cornish word fenton,
2. Newton Moor Well A mile or so down the Red River Valley from Vincent’s Well there is a large patch of uncleared ‘moor’ resting on a bed of decomposed gravel. In the middle of Newton Moor, just south-east of the present Newton Farm, is this well; not very deep, but it has never been known to run dry, even in drought and is enclosed in a high granite structure on top of which is a cast-iron Victorian pump. In front of the well is a paved area of square granite blocks. There is no reason to think that this well is regarded as either holy or medicinal, but it is included here to avoid any further confusion about the well on Newton Moor, and the genuine holy well (no 10 below) on the other Newton tenement at Troon.
3. Well at Peter James’ Carwynnen In an open space among several little holdings at Carwynnen, the best-known of which is sometimes named after a recent occupier (Mr P. James), there is a small shallow well enclosed in an arched or covered edifice of rude granite blocks. It is shown here as an instance of a number of wells in the southern half of the parish, all of which are probably medieval in origin. There is a very similar one (4 The Reens Well). In the lower part of the valley called ‘The Reens’, just east of the road from Killoivose to Treslothan, which once served a now vanished farm called ‘Rocks’ or ‘Rock’s farm’ and the writer remembers as a boy seeing yet another somewhere in the woodlands of Pendarves park.

5.  Treslothan Well The little spring in the central area of Treslothan village, hidden behind a battered iron door, is enclosed in a handsome Gothic arch, and would look more at home in a Breton hamlet than in a Cornish one. Despite the appearance of weathered antiquity, this is really Victorian, a tasteful shrine constructed at the same time as the model village of Treslothan. Visitors sometimes assume wrongly, but understandably that this is a holy well of great age.
6.  Silver Well No one seems to know where this picturesque name cam from. The little natural spring is so called lies immediately below, and on the west side of, the enclosed public footpath across the former Pendarves Woods at the Stennack – a footpath which runs from the lane behind the vicarage at Treslothan, across a style iontpo the field called Hound close and joins the road from Stennark to Carwynnen Water (Lower Cardwynnen) opposite a modern bungalow. The site is now choked by brushwood resulting from tree felling operations, and few people except some elderley persons in the locality could even locate this spring. Thirty years ago, the write could remember it being a lucky well into which pins had to be thrown for a wish, and it gave its name to Silver Well Lane, the upper part of the roadway from Stennack to Lower Carwynnen.

Part two to include Maudlin Well, Sandcot Well, Fenton-Ia and Bodryan Well