Rivers, Wells and Springs in Anglo-Saxon England: Water in Sacred and Mystical Contexts

Abstract

Water has always played a major role in early religious beliefs. There is ample archaeological evidence of this influencing the siting of prehistoric monuments and the casting of votive deposits, sometimes evens sacrificial bodies, in water, or of the suggestion that water might provide a link to the underworld. That such beliefs lingered on into the early medieval period, perhaps to be bolstered by an influx of pagan Anglo-Saxons and then Danes, is in little doubt, and the Christian church had continuously to issue edicts banning what it regarded as pagan practices and especially the dedication of votive offerings to springs and other similar kinds of site, or the ‘worship’ of such sites and gatherings at them. Anglo-Saxon attitudes to bodies of water as the home of demons are also reflected in contemporary literature. Yet Christianity also saw water as a powerful symbol: heathen shrines could be purified by sprinkling on ‘holy’ water; many springs and wells were to be linked to Christian saints and water was an essential part of Christian baptism. These ways of thinking about the landscape of water will be explored in this chapter.