Norfolk | Northumberland
THIS spring is in Boughton Field, near Brampton Bridge, near the Kingsthorpe Road; it is of great note with the common people. It never runs but in mighty gluts of wet, and whenever it does so, it is thought ominous by the country people, who consider these breakings out of the spring to foretell dearth, the death of some great person, or very troublesome times.--Morton, 230.
Near the village are seven wells, in which during the ages of superstition it was usual to dip weakly infants, called berns. From whatever cause this custom was originally adopted, in the course of time some presiding angel was supposed to communicate hidden virtues to the water; and mystical and puerile rites were performed at these springs denominated fontes puerorum. A dark devotion was then paid to wells, which became a continual resort of persons, productive of great disorder, so that such pilgrimages were strictly prohibited by the clergy. An inhibition of this kind appears among other injunctions of Oliver Sutton, Bishop of Lincoln, about the year 1290.--Britton's H. of Northants, p. 209.
Baxter, in his World of Spirits, p. 157, says: "When I was a schoolboy at Oundle, in Northamptonshire, about the Scots' coming into England, I heard a well, in one Dob's yard, drum like any drum beating a march. I heard it at a distance: then I went and put my head into the mouth of the well, and heard it distinctly, and nobody in the well. It lasted several days and nights, so as all the country people came to hear it. And so it drummed on several changes of times. When King Charles II. died I went to the Oundle carrier at the Ram Inn, in Smithfield, who told me their well had drummed, and many people came to hear it. And I heard it drummed once since.' --Brand. Pop. Ant., ii 369.
The well dedicated in honour of St. Laurence, was in days gone by much reverenced; vows were here made, and alms offered.