<< Our Photo Pages >> St Cuthbert's Stone and Well (Waverbridge) - Holy Well or Sacred Spring in England in Cumbria
Submitted by Anne T on Monday, 08 January 2018 Page Views: 1583
Springs and Holy WellsSite Name: St Cuthbert's Stone and Well (Waverbridge)Country: England
NOTE: This site is 3.394 km away from the location you searched for.
County: Cumbria Type: Holy Well or Sacred Spring
Nearest Town: Wigton Nearest Village: Waverbridge
Map Ref: NY2148648605
Latitude: 54.826106N Longitude: 3.223625W
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 14th Jun 2020 - their rating: Cond: 2 Amb: 3 Access: 4 St Cuthbert's Stone & Well: We were making our first (and only for a long time) essential trip out, and passed within 400m of this well, so screeched to a halt at the entrance to the track (Watergate Lonning) at its junction with the B5302 at NY 21277 49139, and took our daily exercise walking down slope towards the well.
There is some sign of the well - in the field as an un-mown area of grass and in the hedge-line under the tree are remnants of a stone structure between the tree roots and along the bank of the ditch. All along the left hand side of the track (eastern side) is a drainage ditch, which we presume took the water from the fields, then when you get to the well, the water from the well joins the ditch. The well was dry at the time of our visit.
The stone was marked on the OS map, but was several fields away, with no gates in sight, so with time pressing, I photographed the well and we set off for our destination. So very odd to be out-and-about after months at home, but lots of other cars on the road, and difficult to rejoin the main road due to the high speed traffic.
The Northern Antiquarian (TNA) features a site for this holy well - see their entry for St. Cuthbert’s Stone & Well, Waverbridge, Cumbria, which gives directions for finding this site, together with a brief description and local folklore.
TNA quotes from Hutchinson's 1794 History of the County of Cumberland: "St. Cuthbert’s Well 'is a fine copious spring of remarkably pure and sweet water which…is called Helly-well, i.e. Haly or Holy Well. It formerly was the custom for the youth of all the neighbouring villages to assemble at this well early in the afternoon of the second Sunday in May, and there to join in a variety of rural sports. It was the village wake, and took place here, it is possible, when the keeping of wakes and fairs in the churchyard was discontinued. And it differed from the wakes of later times chiefly in this, that though it was a meeting entirely devoted to festivity and mirth, no strong drink of any kind was ever seen there, nor anything ever drunk but the beverage furnished by the Naiad of the place. A curate of the parish, about twenty years ago (c.1774), on the idea that it was a profanation of the Sabbath, saw fit to set his face against it; and having deservedly great influence in the parish, the meetings at Helly-well have ever since been discontinued'."
TNA adds: "Two hundred yards away across the fields to the east of this small spring of water, was once seen “a pretty large rock of granite, called St. Cuthbert’s Stane”, though it’s not featured on any modern map – and apart from the folklore-quote (below) being repeated in a couple of other sources, I can find little more about it. The old first edition OS-map shows it right up against the walling. Is it still there?"
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