St Anne was the mother of the Virgin Mary. Her cult came into fashion in Europe from the 12th century onwards, but only became prominent in England at the end of the Middle Ages. Several very popular wells in England were dedicated to her, but there are no medieval St Anne’s wells other than one at Buxton (Derbyshire). The one at Brislington (Bristol), for example, did not appear as St Anne’s Well in the literature until the late 19th century, probably taking its name from the 12th or 13th-century St Anne’s Chapel close by. St Ann’s Well at Malvern (Worcestershire) appears on an estate map of 1744. There is little to indicate that St Anne had a cult following in Wales, and I have located only four wells named for her, all of them suspect non-historic namings.
St Anne’s Well at Trellech appears to be a textbook holy well: a semi-circular stone-walled but unroofed structure with an opening leading into a paved forecourt around which is a low stone bench, and opposite the entrance a chamber set into the rear wall holds the spring. There are also two rectangular niches which may have been intended to hold offerings, or statues. The date of the structure is unknown; it could possibly be 18th century in its present form.
The well is clearly much visited and well maintained, being a prominent feature of Trellech’s landscape, along with the enigmatic standing stones known as Harold’s Stones, and the Norman castle mound Tump Terret. All three are depicted on a fine sundial from 1689 preserved in the church, the well being shown as a circular stone basin. The well was not always so well cared for: in 1839 W.H. Thomas wrote of ‘this neglected fountain’ and exhorted its owner to ‘rebuild its ruined walls’; a watercolour of the well made by Sir Henry Dryden in 1841 also shows the well to be in disrepair and overgrown with foliage. The stonework was repaired in 1951 to mark the Festival of Britain.
The earliest references to a healing well at Trellech do not name it. In the late 17th-century Parochialia, where ‘Twyn Tirret’ (Tump Terret) is named and the standing stones are specifically referred to (‘3 stones pitch’d on end’), all that is said of the well is ‘There is a minerall water here much used & frequented & is said to be very medicinall to such as have the scurvy, collick and other distempers.’ Only a few years later, in 1708, Nathan Rogers referred to ‘Treleg wells’, adding ‘of late years [they] have been found very Medicinal and of the Nature of Tunbridge waters, [i.e. Tunbridge Wells, the spa in Kent] flowing from an iron-ore mineral.’ These early references strongly suggest that the well now known as St Anne’s was originally a healing spa and not a holy well at all. In fact it only appears to have been called St Anne’s Well over the last 100 years or so, the earliest reference to this name so far found being in a report published in 1909. The earliest reference to the name ‘Virtuous Well’ so far noted by me is in William Heard Thomas’s book Tinterne and its Vicinity published in 1839.
The Virtuous Well, situated a quarter of a mile before you enter the straggling village [Trellech], is a chalybeate spring, which rises beneath an antiquated Gothic arch, and flows into a channel with seats on either side, but now overgrown with brooklime, cresses, and fern, and fast hastening to irreparable decay. This spring is so impregnated with carbonate of iron, as to deposit it in considerable quantity as soon as the carbonic acid gas which holds it in suspension is discharged; and although in this condition it is very turbid and nauseous, yet when first drawn from the source it is clear as chrystal [sic] and pure, notwithstanding its inky taste. The medicinal celebrity of this spring is not dependent upon the veracity of monkish traditions or vulgar tale, but it possesses in itself the evidences of its fame. To all with a debilitated constitution, especially to sufferers from dyspepsia, hypochondriasis, and amenorrhagia, these waters, with proper management, would prove an effectual relief. Little does the proprietor of this neglected fountain, over which the wisdom of our ancestors built a devotional shrine, know the treasure which the Almighty has deposited in his hand, or he would gratefully rebuild its ruined walls, cleanse out its channel, and invite guests to a festival of health.
Another early reference to the name ‘Virtuous Wells’ is seen in the caption to Sir Henry Dryden’s 1841 painting, written in his hand. If the well was called St Anne’s Well at that time, he would surely have used that name, or given both names. In 1858 Robert Taylor described the ‘Virtuous Well’ as
a fine chalybeate spring…which, previous to the establishment of the more fashionable watering places, was frequently attended by invalids for the benefit of drinking its waters; and if its virtues were more generally known, we are persuaded that many persons would at the present day repair to this fount for their health’s sake.
Later in the century, in 1890, an account of the well gives a guide to the local pronunciation of its name.
The great national wonders of Trellech are its mineral springs. These are to be found in a field on the Tintern-road, a little out of the village. In order to find them the traveller must ask for the “Vartuous Wells.” They issue below a bank….. and are enclosed in a walled space of horseshoe shape. The principal well is within an oval-headed recess, and on each side of it are smaller apertures. The paving of the enclosure was broken at the time of my visit, and no pains were taken to keep the springs free from weeds and impurities. According to the villagers, there are nine wells (though I failed to find nine), and each well will cure a distinct and separate class of disease. The waters of all have a yellowish red sediment, and a strong, disagreeable taste, the like of which you may taste by taking some ink into your mouth. They are what is called by medical men “chalybeate” – that is, strongly impregnated with iron ore – and are acknowledged by doctors to be of great value as restoratives of the human system, and far more valuable in that respect than those which have made the fortune of fashionable towns in England and on the Continent. Perhaps some day the idea of erecting here a “Spa House” will be realised after all.
In the late 19th century ‘St Anne’s Well’ was a term often used for a well regarded as a healing spa, probably because of the famous historic spa wells in England called St Anne’s, at Malvern and Bristol, neither of them too far away from Trellech. As suggested in the above quotation from 1890, there seems to have been a plan afoot in the late 19th century to turn the ‘Vartuous Wells’ into a spa, a plan never realised.
The 1909 report referred to earlier also contained some fanciful folklore. The report described a visit to Trellech made by members of the Cambrian Archaeological Association in August 1908, and the folklore was provided by Miss Margaret Eyre, ‘as a Priestess in Folk-lore’ rather than as an archaeologist, according to the report, suggesting that the writer considered her tales to be unbelievable, as indeed they are. She reported that the well now known as St Anne’s was also used as a wishing well, with a small pebble being dropped into the water and the wish being granted if many bubbles appeared. If few bubbles showed, there would be a delay in granting the wish; if none appeared, the wish would not be granted. Fairies were said to dance at the well on Midsummer Eve (23 June), and they would use harebell flowers to drink the water, leaving the discarded flowers scattered round the well – though in most years they would have difficulty finding any, since harebells are only in flower from July onwards! When all but one of the wells were closed by the farmer, who had no thought for the poor who used them, or the fairies, a little old man was seen by him sitting on the well’s edge. He told the farmer that he would have no water on his farm until he reopened the wells, so he had to clear them all out and the water flowed again.
Tristan Gray Hulse, having summed up the history of the Virtuous Well, concluded that its relatively modern renaming as St Anne’s Well came about as a result of Margaret Eyre’s involvement in publicising it.
As for Miss Eyre, with regard to the name, it is perhaps best, and certainly charitable, to assume that, with the proximity and continued fame of the St Anne’s Well at Malvern in mind, the name had come locally to be used generically, that is, the Virtuous Well had come to be called a St Anne’s Well, meaning no more than any holy well-cum-spa; and that Eyre mistakenly assumed that it was the Trelleck well’s original and proper name. (But that still does not excuse the fairies!)
When I first visited this well, in 1976, the usual small offerings of flowers were to be found there but nothing else. However by the late 1990s the bushes behind it had become a receptacle for offerings which were tied to the branches, like the more famous rag-bushes elsewhere. In January 2013 a visitor reported finding ‘ten candles around the inside of the well, a little bronze angel holding a crystal, and a glass frame with two large butterflies pressed against it.’ And I found, on my visit in 2012, that the well had also acquired an information board unfortunately perpetuating the fairy folklore. The subtly changing nature of this well from a ‘medicinal mineral water’ in the late 17th century, to a healing spa, to a saint’s well, to a fairy haunt, and finally in the early 21st century to a fully fledged New Age shrine complete with offerings, is a classic example of how wells can change and develop over the years, decades and centuries as the expectations of the visitors change.
Location: SO50300510. The well is to the south of the village, in a field beside the lane leading south-east towards Llandogo and Tintern.
Sources: Cult of St Anne: Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn (eds), Interpreting Cultural Symbols: St Anne in Late Medieval Society (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1990); Rev. Myles V. Ronan, S. Anne, Her Cult and Her Shrines (London: Sands & Co., 1927).
St Anne wells in England: Jeremy Harte, English Holy Wells: A Sourcebook (Wymeswold: Heart of Albion Press, 2008); Bord (2008): in both books, see index entries for Brislington, Buxton, Malvern.
St Anne in Wales: Madeleine Gray, Images of Piety: The Iconography of Traditional Religion in Late Medieval Wales (BAR British Series 316)(Oxford: Archaeopress, 2000), Ch.2.
Well structure and history: Lhwyd, Parochialia, III, 19-20; Nathan Rogers, Memoirs of Monmouth-shire (1708), 34; William Head Thomas, Tinterne and its Vicinity (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1839), 70; Archwilio: Glamorgan Gwent PRN 00678g; Coflein NPRN 32405; Sir Henry Dryden’s 1841 paintings of well and sundial are now in the Sir Henry Dryden Collection in Northampton Central Library; Robert Taylor, Taylor’s Illustrated Guide to the Banks of the Wye (London: T.W. Gratton; Chepstow: Robert Taylor, 1858), 77.
‘Vartuous Wells’: W.H. Greene, ‘Remarkable Places in Monmouthshire – Trellech and its Wonders’, Weekly Mail, 25 October 1890. The article includes a rough sketch of the well at that time.
Well lore: Palmer, The Folklore of (old) Monmouthshire (Woonton Almeley: Logaston Press,1998), 111-13; Stephanie Poultner, ‘Wells and Springs Around Trellech’, Living Spring, Issue One (2000); Report of Monmouth Meeting, August 1908, in Archaeologia Cambrensis, vol. 9 (1909), 70-1.
2013 offerings: Eve Nicholson on Facebook page ‘Holy Wells of Wales’, 23 January 2013.
