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