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Sacred Springs and Holy Wells of the East Riding

‘If I were called in / To

construct a religion/ I

should make use of

water’ wrote Philip Larkin

in his poem ‘Water’. All

religions have done so.

Water is the source of life

and can kill. It heals,

cleanses, purifies, and

destroys. It’s mysterious,

fascinating and

capricious: it springs from

the earth, the

underworld. It shows us

our own reflection as

could nothing else in

prehistory and was used

for prophecy. In the Middle Ages, holy water was so precious it was locked away, and the belief of

the people in the power of holy wells and springs was so feared by the zealots of the Reformation

that they were banned and some destroyed.

My interest in this subject was first piqued by this rather

quirky book written in 1923 by the Reverend William

Smith, which has been referenced by researchers into

this topic ever since, although many of the wells and

springs he identified are long gone. Why? The usual

culprits of the Anthropocene: over-exploitation, abuse

and neglect. The water table of the chalk aquifer has

been so depleted for drinking and farming that many

springs have run dry. Some have been filled in, ploughed

over, built upon or repurposed as rubbish dumps or

cattle troughs. Others are neglected and unfindable

among the brambles. But some have been saved and a

few of these we’ll look at.

But first we’ll go deep into prehistory to look for local evidence of water awe from ancient times.

A visit to the Great Wold Valley, which now holds the Gypsey Race, flowing from Wharram le Street into the sea at Bridlington, must mystify even the casual observer. How can such a wide, gently sloping valley, so different from the usual dry, steep-sided valleys of the Wolds, contain such a tiny, and often completely dry, stream. Geologists now think that this valley was carved by one of the great Yorkshire rivers now flowing into the Ouse and Humber, possibly the Nidd, that was blocked in one of the Ice Ages. The Gypsey Race is a misfit stream, a ‘winterbourne’, a stream like others found in the South Downs and other calcareous parts of Britain. It flows from the chalk aquifer and is intermittent due to the changing water levels in the rock reservoir. Daniel Defoe, writing in 1722, was mystified by the locals’ talk of the ‘gypsies’ or ‘vipseys’ as they were then spelt, pronounced with a hard ‘g’, as in the original Norse word ‘gypa’ for geyser. He soon realised they were not

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describing the travelling folk, but a natural phenomenon. ‘At some certain seasons, for none knows when it will happen, several streams of water gush out of the earth with great violence, spouting up a huge heighth, being really natural jettes d’eaus or fountains; that they make a great noise, and, joining together form little rivers, and so hasten to the sea … the country people have a notion that whenever those gypsies, or, as some call them, vipseys , break out, there will certainly ensue either famine or plague.’ Defoe then remembered a similar superstition in Surrey and indeed this was a common folklore of these winterbournes, which became known as ‘waters of woe’. They must have been more spectacular in the past before the water levels in the aquifer were depleted. In 1910, there was such a flood that a young boy drowned in Cottam Dale. There are many springs along the eastern side of the Wolds that fountain erratically from pinhole-sized holes in the chalk, and springs that burst through the overlying clays called locally ‘naffers’ as in Nafferton.

Left: the Gypsey Race in the wet summer of 2019. The Great Wold Valley has been described as possibly the third most important site of ritual monuments in Britain after Salisbury Plain and Orkney. Much less well known than these, because it has been largely ploughed out, it

is still lined by a few visible burial mounds, remains of cursus monuments, and the largest monolith in Britain at Rudston, where the Gypsey race turns south, suggesting that the valley was seen by people of the Neolithic and Bronze Age as a sacred place.

Above: Willy Howe on the Great Wold Valley Page 3 left: Rudston Monolith and Church Page 3 right: The Great Wold Valley from Weaverthorpe Church

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Another interesting local site is Leven Carrs, the site of the Leven Canal, below, cut in 1801 probably

through one of the seventy ancient meres, relics of the Ice Age and now drained in East Yorkshire

with only Hornsea Mere remaining. With chalk springs feeding into it, the flora gives it SSSI status,

including species which may have found refugia here after the last Ice Age.

Above left: Leven Canal. Above right top: Bladderwort, a carnivorous plant that traps organisms

underwater. Above right below: White Water Lily, both growing in the canal.

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The area has been the site of human exploitation since Mesolithic times, but several Bronze Age

weapons have been found here, deliberately broken and deposited in these marshlands, part of

some unexplained ritual, as in these broken swords below held by East Riding Museums.

This phenomenon is well

documented throughout

Britain and is clearly not

accidental loss but deliberate

breaking and placing of

valuable objects, put beyond

use, in a ritual event.

The sign reads ‘Gifts to

forgotten gods have seen the

light of day once more’.

Close to the canal is the site of

one of the lost holy wells: St

Faith’s Well, now filled in.

Only the graveyard of the old church survives (below), on a small rise north of Hall Garth, the old

manor house of Leven. The church was replaced in 1843 by the new Holy Trinity in modern Leven

village.

To find the most well known of the restored holy wells in our area you need to visit one of the

holiest of places, Goodmanham. This, according to Venerable Bede, was the site of the Celtic pagan

temple (‘godo’ or ‘uncovered sanctuary’). Bede described its destruction by the Northumbrian high

priest Coifi after a dramatic ride from York, when his master King Edwin was converted to

Christianity by his wife Ethelburga and her priest, Paulinus. The Church of all Hallows contains a

possibly Saxon font that was recovered from a local farm where it had been used as a drinking

trough. The receptacles for holy water could go the same way as the wells.

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There are three reputedly holy wells around the village, but the restored one is St Helen’s Well on

the Hudson Way. This was renovated by the Guides in 1983 and is a ‘rag well’ or ‘clootie well’.

Rag wells are traditional wells used for healing, prophecy and wishing or prayer. A tree, in this case

an elder but often a hawthorn, would be draped with rags, taken from the clothes of the afflicted

person. The rag would first be dipped in the water, and sometimes the supplicant would drink or

bathe in the water too. The prayer would be made, the person might walk around the tree in the

direction of the sun across the sky, and the rag would be tied to the tree. This must be a very old

practice, but one that persisted in some parts into the 20th century, and perhaps is still practised.

Look at this description from Janet Bord’s book Sacred Waters, reporting a record of visit to a holy

well in Edinburgh a hundred years ago. Many sacred wells were reported to give cures for eye

ailments.

‘The crown departed and the group came forward , consisting of two old women, a younger woman

of about thirty, and a pale, sickly-looking girl – a child of three or four years. Producing cups from

their pockets, the old women dipped them in the pool, filled them, and drank their contents. A full

cup was then presented to the younger woman, and another to the child, then one of the old women

produced a long linen bandage, dipped it in the water, wrung it, dipped it in again, and then wound it

round the child’s head, covering the eyes; the youngest woman, evidently the mother of the child,

carefully observing the operation and weeping gently all the time. The other old woman not

engaged in this work was carefully filling a clear glass bottle with the water, evidently for future use.

Then after the principal operators had looked at each other with an earnest and half-solemn sort of

look, the party wended its way carefully down the hill.’

Poignancy is there in some of the messages posted on the tree today, though ribbons have replaced

rags.

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The well is dedicated to St Helen, along with another seven in the old East Yorkshire, as described by

the Rev. Smith, and more in the rest of Yorkshire. Why St Helen? She was the mother of Constantine

the Great, who was born in York. Various stories exist about her birth, some say she was a

publican’s daughter, others that she was high-born in Bythnia. We do know she was abandoned by

her husband, Constantius, after the birth of her son, so he could make a more suitable marriage for

his imperial ambitions. She made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land where she is reputed to have found

fragments of the true cross and founded churches in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. She’s an important

saint in Eastern Orthodox churches.

But there is an earlier figure in the frame, Elen, a Celtic goddess, so this story may be older than we

think. Certainly the Druids were a well-respected priestly class of scientists, healers and academics,

as described by the early Romans, but were inevitably later denigrated by the conquerors and then

the Christians. They held ceremonies in sacred groves, and were known to be nature-worshippers.

Many facts are lost but we know that Celtic river names, like the Derwent, and possibly the Hull and

Humber, have survived all our linguistic invasions, so perhaps at least some of these holy wells have

survived and been rededicated, a practice that would have paid off for the new religions to win

hearts and minds.

There’s another restored St Helen’s Well (below) at Great Hatfield, another rag well. This was

restored in 1995 and although on private land is well looked after and accessible. Like many holy

wells it’s by the site of a church, although now the church is gone, burnt down centuries ago and the

village is served by Aldborough Church. The graveyard is next door and a footpath follows a green

lane to the site of what must have been the old church, on a knoll overlooking the surrounding

flatlands. A few yards down the road is an ancient wayside cross, suggesting that this village was

once an important crossroads. The well is annually blessed by the vicar of Aldborough Church.

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Above left: the village cross with lions at the base. Right: the vicar of Aldborough blesses the well. From https://aldbroughbenefice.wordpress.com/about/st-helens-well/st-helens-well-2017/#jp-carousel-227

If you look on the website https://insearchofholywellsandhealingsprings.com/category/rag-well/, you’ll find a recent

survey of why people still leave offerings at these traditional holy wells. Although the religious

intent may be less significant, people still wish for good health, for themselves or loved ones, to give

thanks for good fortune, or to ask for a blessing of some sort. Significantly too, perhaps, in this age

of detachment from the natural world, some talk of ‘giving some part of myself to the spirit of place’

or respecting ‘ancient, spiritual beliefs’.

One feature of sacred wells in the ancient world has, perhaps, disappeared, or maybe it just isn’t

admitted to. At Bath, by the ancient hot springs of Sulis Minerva, the hybrid Celtic/Roman goddess,

several curse tablets were found, suggesting these springs were not just seen as forces for good

(below).

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Bath is a good example of a spring that would indeed have seemed to have mystical properties from

very early times (it’s hot and mineralised from its source beneath the Mendips) and was

appropriated by different religions, conquerors and fashions. It was undoubtedly a Celtic place of

worship, which was then Romanised, then later Christianised. After the Reformation, when holy

wells were declared places of idolatry (or hydrolatry as it’s now known), it was still valued for its

healing waters and led to the great secular spa fashion of Georgian times.

By 1690, Beverley was in on the spa act (or ‘spaws’ as they were originally known), and the Swine

Moor Spa was on record. Extraordinary though this may seem, as before the drainage programmes

of the 18th and 19th centuries Swine Moor was even more of a flood plain than it is now, roads were

constructed, buildings and pools erected, and employees maintained the spa. Even in the Reverend

Smith’s time in 1923, there were two walled bathing ponds, and a ‘drainer’ living there with his

family.

In the 18th century the well was dedicated to Saint John, but this is the only evidence of its ancestry

as a holy well. It’s probably a ‘blow-well’, an artesian well where water is driven up through

overlying deposits at pressure from the chalk aquifer below. It certainly had a reputation for being

extremely cold but never freezing, a characteristic of such water. It had a reputation for being ‘a

great dryer’ and useful for skin conditions and the ‘King’s Evil’, a form of tuberculosis. Fishermen

from Hull were said to fill bottles from it. It could be drunk or bathed in.

Left: Swinemoor Spa today, in its grove of

hawthorns, looking rather Druidic I think

Below left: The brickwork still left today

Below right: tree roots grown over a bridge and

track leading to the spa. The outlines of the

bathing pools and the ditch leading to the

stream nearby are still just traceable.

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Nearby is Beverley Beck, which may itself have once been the site of ceremonies involving rags and

prayers. We know that in the 12th century a mill at the then entrance to the Beck was sold, and it

was called ‘Ragbrook Mill’. At the town end of the Beck, lies the site of the old St Nicholas’ Church,

the patron saint of sailors. This church fell into early decay post-Reformation, along with the decline

of Beckside and the town’s trade. We do know that there were springs here known for their healing

properties, and in 1808 Gillyat Sumner was objecting to the tenant stopping up springs which were

‘very much frequented by inhabitants and others at considerable distance as a Medical water’.

Another name clue to

the water stories of this

area lies in the original

name of Beaver Road:

Boggle Lane.

Boggles were shape-

shifting mischievous

spirits that were often

known to haunt springs

and wells. The word

root lives on in terms

like ‘bogeyman’ and

‘bugbear’, and there are

still place names around

like Boggle Hole near

Whitby.

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Beverley Beck today

(left), still tranquil but

not unspoilt, graced

with an industrial estate

to the north and the

town’s none too

fragrant sewage works

to the south.

The boggle legend

reappears at another

local well, this time at

Atwick, which still bears

the name on maps of ‘Halliwell’ (holy well). Now a rather sorry looking pond (below left), this has a

one-eyed boggle legend, as well as stories of a headless horseman and a white lady. This is certainly

a historic well, having, in common with others, proximity to a church (the modern St Lawrence is a

rebuild), a crossroads and a medieval village cross in Atwick itself.

There are remnants of what appears to be

stonework (below) , which suggests that this

was once an established roadside well, serving

travellers, but, as the name suggests, having

some spiritual functions too.

Modern ghosts tend to be historical characters

who met an untimely end, but historically they

were the souls of the recently dead. The

Reformation outlawed the doctrine of

Purgatory, a sort of waiting room for Heaven,

where souls could be hastened to the afterlife

by the prayers of their loved ones or priests.

Purgatory was big business for the Roman

Catholic Church, but its abolition was an

existential loss of solace for many people

who believed that sins could be forgiven

and bliss attained by the intercession of the

saints, and who now might be left to roam

indefinitely, unsaved.

Placing coins in wells was another form of

offering, still familiar to everyone today, and

in East Yorkshire we have at least one

record of a ‘pin well’, at Keyingham. This

well is on the 1855 OS map as ‘St Philip’s

Well’, with a nearby ‘St Philip’s Cross’, both

gone. It was probably founded in the 14th

century.

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National Library of Scotland https://maps.nls.uk/view/125645485. Accessed 8/2/21.

The Reverend Smith says this well was dedicated to Philip Inglebred of Beverley who was Rector of

Keyingham in the early 14th century, and whose tomb, according to the Meaux Chronicles “exuded

scented oil”. Many East Riding Wells were named for female saints or were just ‘Lady Wells’, part of

the Marian cult of the Middle Ages, itself possibly a Christianisation of earlier goddess worship.

St Philip’s Well became known locally as a pin well. I wonder if this was a later development as the

Anglican church distanced itself from holy wells. One Yorkshire folk tale tells us that pin wells were

under the control of the fairies, who swapped young girls’ pins (to be used for fairy arrows as they

were stronger than hawthorns), for predictions about the girls’ future marriage partners. The

tradition of throwing pins or coins in wells is an ancient one. The coins or pins were sometimes

bent, showing they were no longer useable in their original function but were purely devotional.

Could this go back to the Bronze Age tradition of breaking watery offerings to the gods? Nowadays,

offerings are likely to be intact, and at the world’s most famous coin well, the Trevi Fountain in

Rome, on a normal year over three thousand euros can be collected in a day for Roman Catholic

charities.

Our own St John of Beverley has his well at Harpham

(left), which was his reputed birthplace. The well has

been preserved and since 1929 a procession and

service have been held on the Thursday nearest the

7th May, his Saint’s Day. One of the recorded

properties of the well water was its ability to calm

wild beasts. The well is decorated with spring flowers

for the saint’s day. The Great Hatfield ceremony is

also in May, which recalls the pagan Beltane festival

of the 1st May, celebrating the return of spring, in

festivities more libertarian than today’s.

The Derbyshire custom of well dressing may have

similar lost origins, but this is a very specific tradition

of applying clay to a board and then decorating this

with flower petals, as in this example at Monyash

overleaf.

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There is another well in Harpham, the Drummer’s

Well, which is closer to the church. However, this is

of another category of wells, known through history

as ‘doom wells’. These foretold dire events, in

Harpham’s case the death of one of the St Quintin

family. One intriguing theory is that these

drumming well legends arose because of the eerie

calls of bitterns, once common in these watery edge

lands.

Finally, we must turn to the holiest site of all, right

next to the high altar of Beverley Minster, in the

picture below. It’s unsurprising that some of our

great cathedrals have their own wells. Pure water

would be needed not just for baptism and

sacramental washing , but for drinking water for the

many pilgrims who would have stayed there. There

are two wells, for example, within York Minster, but

Beverley Minster’s is unique in the country as it is so

close to the high altar. Some historians have

conjectured that this might mean that the well originated at the time of the Anglo-Saxon church.

What we do know is

that this well lay

hidden until it was

rediscovered in the

1870s when the floor

of the sanctuary was

being renovated. It is

about thirteen feet

deep, with stone

surrounds and steps,

and was found with a

variety of artefacts in

it including pins, but

the most striking

discovery was

remnants of painted

stonework. One

theory is that these

are remains of the shrine of Saint John which was destroyed around 1548 after the Reformation.

Perhaps the well, along with the shrine, were destroyed together as symbols of idolatry.

The well is occasionally opened as part of maintenance work. In 2012 it was opened and HU17

magazine reported that Steve Rial took a sample of the water to test its purity and found it clean

enough ‘to make a brew’.

I hope you get a chance to visit some of these wells and discover more for yourselves.

Report of Presentation for Beverley U3A January 2021. Helen Kitson 2021

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Some key sources

Ancient Springs and Streams of the East Riding of Yorkshire by Rev. W. Smith (1923)

Yorkshire Holy Wells and Sacred Springs by Edna Whelan and Ian Taylor (1989)

Sacred Waters: Holy Wells and Water Lore in Britain and Ireland by Janet and Colin Bord (1986)

Folklore of Yorkshire by Kai Roberts (2013)

A Tour through the Whole Island of Britain by Daniel Defoe (1727)

For holy wells in the UK: https://insearchofholywellsandhealingsprings.com

For holy wells in Yorkshire: http://www.halikeld.f9.co.uk/holywells/index.htm

For a history of Beckside:

https://www.eastridingmuseums.co.uk/EasySiteWeb/EasySite/StyleData/culture/downloads/museu

ms/past-exhibits/beverley-guildhall/beckside.pdf