I have been meaning to do this for some time, and
the current discussion of saints' and other wells has finally prompted me to do
so.
Back in the dim and distant past of twenty years or
more ago, I first became interested in holy wells and began to write up my
visits to them for the old version of 'Source' magazine. I knew nothing at all,
swallowed every inherited opinion about them, and had some very silly ideas
indeed. One notion was that where there was a water-source near a church, that
water-source had to have had some sacred identity in the past, and ought,
really, to bear the same dedication as the church. In some respects I still
think this model has some validity, and we can point to many places where it is
the case. Nevertheless, in those early days I very confidently ascribed names
and holy status to a number of sites which (I note from megalithic.co.uk
especially) are now in danger of finding their way into the corpus of accepted
holy wells, probably thanks to the old 'Source' archive being available
online.
So...
I HEREBY REPUDIATE, DENY, AND LIKEWISE RETRACT from
the accepted number of 'holy wells' ALL THOSE wells, springs, and putative
records thereof, identified or named by me in articles and writings published
between 1987 and 1989, namely:
'St Mary & the Holy Spirit's Well', Lyme Regis,
Dorset (this, the Leper's Well, is certainly an ancient site, but never had that
name which was merely the dedication of the chapel nearby)
'St Michael's Well, Sopley, Hampshire' (clearly a
holy well of some sort, if only Victorian, but that name is completely
unjustified)
'All Saints' Well, Hordle' (probably of no
significance)
'All Saints' Well, Thorney Hill' (almost certainly
of no significance)
'St Andrew's Well, Corton Denham' (no evidence for
this site other than its location)
I also produced reports of St Barbara's Well,
Cucklington; St Sativola's Well, Charlton Horethorne; and St Cyprian's Well,
Ashill, each with rather pleasing drawings. All these come from Ethelbert
Horne's book on Somerset wells, and while the Cucklington one may have some
validity, the Ashill suggestion makes me wince, and 'St Sativola's' now looks
like the merest fancy.
Within a couple of years I had rumbled this, and
although my copy of my article on Oxfordshire wells in Oxoniensia 1990 seems to
have gone walkies, I'm pretty sure that where I made a suggestion that a well
had borne a name or dedication there it appears in inverted commas to signal the
provisional nature of the statement. Unfortunately my Dorset wells piece in
Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History & Archaeological Society for 1993
has a number of typos which make the situation unclear. Thus, I would like to
make it clear that the so-called 'St Peter's Wells' at Litton Cheney, Long
Bredy, and Purse Caundle are nothing more than speculative, and have the same
status as others in that article printed in inverted commas - they can't be used
to prove anything. The one exception is Cattistock, which, like the Sopley well,
is definitely a holy well dating at least from the 1870s reconstruction of the
church there, but which bears no name.
My article on Leicestershire wells, and booklets on
Kent and Bucks, mention a number of speculative wells and dedications, but
always make it clear when this is so. Phew.
So, in short, I unreservedly apologise for having
misled people (especially David Woods who has gone to the trouble of writing up
a couple of these wretched wells for megalithic.co.uk) by generating such
spurious sites, and hold out my wrists to be slapped by the entire hydrolatric
community.
James