Virtuous Well

This well is also known as St Anne’s Well. The stone surround offers places for visitors to leave offerings and the stone seats would also have been welcomed by travellers.

In the 18th and 19th centuries the water was considered especially beneficial in the treatment of eye ailments and for treating ‘complaints peculiar to women’. It was also used as a wishing well. Girls wanting to know how long they would have to wait for marriage would drop in a pebble and every bubble that rose counted as one month …. a much shorter time scale than at Alsia Well in Cornwall where each bubble counted as a year! Fairies were believed to dance at the well and one day a local farmer dug up a fairy ring around it and from then on, whenever he (and only he) tried to draw water, the well was dry, but as soon as he replaced the missing turf he was able to get water again. On midsummer’s eve, the fairies were said to drink it’s water from harebells which were found strewn around on midsummer’s morning. There was also a legend that nuns from Tintern Abbey had used a three mile long tunnel so that they could use the water unobserved .... historically however, there were only monks at Tintern.