Reforming The Waters: Holy Wells and Healing Springs in Protestant England

Abstract

All too often neglected and overgrown, holy wells still dot the AA English countryside. Many more are merely a distant memory: names recorded by dead antiquarians, folklorists, and topographers and since forgotten, sites marked on Ordnance Survey maps soon to be obliterated by the encroaching urban and industrial world. Despite the heroic efforts of a group of local historians, this aspect of British heritage is in rapid decline. Those which have survived represent only a tiny fraction of the vast number that were scattered across the rural landscape on the eve of the Henrician Reformation. Wells were an integral part of the late medieval geography of the sacred, a matrix of ancient holy places where ordinary people could approach and invoke the divine. Casual weekend visits by ramblers and picnicking families are almost all that remains of the thriving culture of pilgrimage to such hallowed spots.