<< Text Pages >> St. Osyth's Well (St. Osyth) - Holy Well or Sacred Spring in England in Essex
Submitted by DavidCWoods on Monday, 07 February 2005 Page Views: 10515
Springs and Holy WellsSite Name: St. Osyth's Well (St. Osyth) Alternative Name: St. Ositha's WellCountry: England
NOTE: This site is 2.894 km away from the location you searched for.
County: Essex Type: Holy Well or Sacred Spring
Nearest Town: Clacton Nearest Village: St. Osyth
Map Ref: TM11651670
Latitude: 51.808851N Longitude: 1.068798E
Condition:
5 | Perfect |
4 | Almost Perfect |
3 | Reasonable but with some damage |
2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site |
1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks |
0 | No data. |
-1 | Completely destroyed |
5 | Superb |
4 | Good |
3 | Ordinary |
2 | Not Good |
1 | Awful |
0 | No data. |
5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access |
4 | Short walk on a footpath |
3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk |
2 | A long walk |
1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find |
0 | No data. |
5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates |
4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map |
3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map |
2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village |
1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town |
0 | no data |
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External Links:
Holy Well or Sacred Spring in Essex. This well is situated on private land within the estate of St. Osyth Priory. St. Osyth was a Mercian princess (although others say there was more than one St. Osyth) who founded the church of St. Peter and Paul, and instituted a nunnery, supposed to be the most ancient monastic establishment in England in the village that now bears her name.
She was beheaded by the Danes, and the legend runs that "at the place of her martyrdom a fountain sprang up, which continues to this day as a sovereign remedy for many diseases; her head was cut off; the body rose, and taking the head in her hand walked – guided by angels – to the church. Here it knocked at the door, and then fell to the ground". The stream was afterwards collected by monks in a long pipe.<
Having written to the local Vicar, I received a reply from the History Recorder for the church. The well site is apparently still extant in Nun’s Wood, about a mile and a half from the Priory House. It is a spring with a brick culvert feeding a pond (named on the 1880 OS map as Dolphin Pond) close to what may be the ruin of the original nunnery.
The Northern Antiquarian (TNA) features a page for this site - see their entry for St. Osyth’s Well, St. Osyth, Essex, which gives the same description as above plus local folklore.
Pastscape Monument No. 387739 records a nun's conduit house at TM 1165 1670, which describes one wall left of the south gable of this structure, which are probably the remains of the small stone building which covered the well.
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