Shropshire | Staffordshire
THIS well is in St. Anne's Wood; near it was a building, probably used as a guest-house, and also a chapel, which was formerly attached to Keynsham Abbey, a monk of this abbey generally residing on the spot.
Pilgrimages were made to it, and on the well being cleared, in 1878, many coins and tokens, offerings of the pilgrims, were found. July 26 was the day on which the pilgrimages were usually made.
The water of this well was formerly considered good for affections of the eye.
The chapel was dismantled, and the pilgrimages, against which Latimer once preached a sermon in Bristol, were suppressed in 1536.
At Ashill, near Ilminster, is a well which on the first Sunday in May is agitated by bubbles, and the sick and lame used to be brought to bathe there. St. Nipperham is believed to be a corruption of St. Cyprian.
Near Doulting is still shown St. Aldheim's Well of wonder-working water.--Denham Tracts.
St. Mary's Well is situated in the crypt of the Chapel of our Lady, in a recess, and vaulted over; it runs northward under the priory. It is said to have been used for washing purposes.
When St. Peter consecrated the church of the monastery of the Isle of Thorns, after having been ferried over by Eldric, the [150] fisherman, he evoked with his staff the two springs of the island.--Dean Stanley's Hist. Remains of Westminster Abbey, 2nd ed., p. 21.
There is a chalybeate spring, known as Alford Well, about three-quarters of a mile from the church; it is now disused.
Of Bully Well no legend is forthcoming. Its waters are said to be efficacious for diseases of the eye.
The fourteen daughters of Brecan were turned into as many rivers, which, in all their maiden purity, fall into the Severn.
The city of Bath has a curious and somewhat comic tradition (which is noticed in its local guide-books), that the old British King Bladud, d. 844 B.C. (father of King Lear or Leal, d. 799 B.C.), being reduced by leprosy to the condition of a swine-herd, discovered the medicinal virtues of the hot springs of Bath, while noticing that his pigs which bathed therein were cured of sundry diseases prevailing among them. Warner, one chief writer on the history of Bath, quotes this tradition at large from Wood, a local topographer of the preceding century, who gives it without authority. Warner states that, although the legend may appear absurd, it is noticed and credited by most British antiquaries of antiquity.--N. and Q., 2 5., ix. 45.
The following epigram on the Bristol Hogs
is by a clergyman of the
name of Groves, of Claverton:
When Bladud once espied some Hogs
Lie wallowing in the steaming bogs,
Where issue forth those sulphurous springs,
Since honor'd by more potent Kings,
Vex'd at the brutes alone possessing
What ought C have been a common blessing,
He drove them thence in mighty wrath,
And built the mighty Town of Bath.
The hogs thus banished by their Prince,
Have liv'd in Bristol ever since.
There was, in 1464, a well in this parish called St. John's Well, to which an immense concourse of people resorted, and many who had for years laboured under various bodily diseases, and had found no benefit from physic and physicians, were, by the use of these waters, after paying their due offerings, restored to their pristine health.--Collinson's H. of S., iii. 104.
It was customary on Holy Thursday to carry persons here afflicted with disease.