<< Our Photo Pages >> St Alkelda's Holy Well - Holy Well or Sacred Spring in England in Yorkshire (North)
Submitted by Sunny100 on Thursday, 27 May 2010 Page Views: 7353
Springs and Holy WellsSite Name: St Alkelda's Holy Well Alternative Name: St Alkelda's SpringCountry: England
NOTE: This site is 3.6 km away from the location you searched for.
County: Yorkshire (North) Type: Holy Well or Sacred Spring
Nearest Town: Leyburn Nearest Village: Middleham
Map Ref: SE124879
Latitude: 54.286583N Longitude: 1.811027W
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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Anne T visited on 27th Apr 2017 - their rating: Cond: 2 Amb: 1 Access: 4 St. Alkelda's Well, Middleham: How tragic – a now dried up well, completely uncared for.
From St. Mary’s and St. Alkeld’s church, I was determined to find St. Alkeld’s Well. Armed only with the mobile phone, OS maps and the grid reference from Pastscape, we set off westwards across the fields, through the gate in the churchyard across a grassy field with a play area at the far end, through a gate leading into where St. Alkeld’s Road and The Springs meet, then through a stile into a grassy field. Measuring the distance between the church porch and the well, the distance is just under 250 metres.
We walked past the well without realising it, thinking it was only a pile of stones and rubble that someone had tossed over their garden wall. On checking the grid reference, we walked back to it.
Having seen the image of the trough by the roadside on both the Portal and Yorkshire Holy Wells, we searched in vain, eventually walking back to The Springs and looking down the driveways. The well is sited at the bottom of the gardens of the two small houses, one called ‘Well Cottage’. Having taken some photographs, we followed the footpaths back into the town centre, ending up at a medieval cross at SE 12607 87679 (see on a previous visit).
Long ago the well, close to Middleham House and St Alkelda's Road, flowed through a square opening in the wall and then went underground only to surface close by and run into a 3 foot deep square-shaped stone structure or tank. Local people and visiting pilgrims would partake of the curative water, which according to legend, was good for healing poor eyesight and general health conditions. A sort of tonic perhaps.
St Alkelda or Alcelda was a Saxon princess who became a nun. However, she was murdered beside the spring by two Viking women who detested her Christian beliefs. Legend says they used a long length of cloth or something similar to carry out the terrible deed. After her death on the 28th March 800 AD she was proclaimed a martyr. Her bones, if they were hers, were discovered along with a Saxon stone (part of her shrine) in the church last century. A stainedglass window (partly14th century) depicts the saint's martyrdom.
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