Staffordshire Wells and Springs

I’ll keep a list of Staffordshire’s springs and wells and their stories as I find them here, until I decide what to do with them..

Merliches/Maudlin’s Well, Beacon Park (?), Lichfield – tradition suggests that Maudlin’s Well, somewhere near to Shaw Lane, was so called due to a drunkard tumbling in one evening after one too many.

Jacob’s Well, Friars Alley (?), Lichfield – a few yards from Trunkfield brook was a spring reputed to cure weak and sore eyes

St Mary’s Well, Breadmarket St (?), Lichfield – according to the County History, St. Mary’s Well, in Breadmarket Street was opposite the west end of St. Mary’s church, and existed in the late Middle Ages

Foulwell/Donniwell, Aldershawe, nr Lichfield

St Chad’s Well, Stowe, Lichfield – See here

Nun’s Well, Cannock Wood– a spring rising up into a chamber cut into the rock and built up with stone blocks. A c.16th arch was built over it and there is a large oak tree over the site which is now reportedly now destroyed. Its water was once said to have cured sore eyes and there is a legend that a ghost of a nun pushed into the well haunts the site.

St Betram’s Well, Ilam

Farewell, nr Lichfield – See here and here

Stoneywell, nr Lichfield – a round pool where a spring flows from beneath a large boulder. It’s said that local people believed that if they moved the stone, then their cattle would fall ill.

St Modwen’s well, Canwell, nr Lichfield

St Ruffin’s Well, Tamworth

Giddywell, nr Lichfield

St John’s Well, Shenstone

St Erasmus Well, Ingestre

Meg A Wood’s Well, Chapel Ash

St Crudley’s, Bilston

The Leper Well, Codsall

St Modwen’s Well, Canwell, nr Tamworth

 

12 thoughts on “Staffordshire Wells and Springs”

  1. There’s a well in the field just opposite the wishing well garage on the way into Rugeley. My neighbour has a bricked well in his back garden he discovered a few years ago and there is a well in the back garden of a farm in Whittington hirst (concreted over). Are these the sort of things you’re looking for?

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  3. Sir John Floyer was a physician in Lichfield who wrote about the merits of cold water bathing. (it was he who sent Samuel Johnson to be touched by Queen Anne for scrofula). He didn`t just theorise about it, he had a cold bath built in Lichfield for rheumatic patients. It consisted of two receptacles side by side, the upper one for ladies, emptying into the lower one for gentlemen. He sometimes bled or purged his patients before they entered the water.
    Dr Darwin said ” There is a situation where the manner of production of springs is most agreeably visible. It is about a mile from Lichfield situated by the cold bath erected by Sir John Floyer, in a beautiful piece of ground which was formerly Dr Darwins Botanical Garden.
    In this place, a grotto, 5 yards wide and 10 long has been excavated into the side of a hill. A perpetual dribbling of water oozes quite around the grotto, like a shower from a weeping rock”.

    After some temperature experiments by Sir Floyer he declared that the water at Unites well was colder by 3 degrees than that of St Chads well, and so, more beneficial for his cold bath position.

    In Dr Plots History of Staffordshire he calls it Unity Well.

    info from Taking The Cure by ES Turner 1967, & The History and Antiquities of the Church and City of Lichfield by Rev.Thos Harwood

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  5. Hi Kate, what a great site you have built! I have been working on my family history with two others surnamed Pipes who live in England. (I live in Wisconsin, USA.) We have speculated that the name “Pipes” is a derivative of the name “Pipe” from the early 1400s and in ancient times the name Pipe may have started near what is today called Pipehill. Early records there find the name ‘De Pipe’ and in earlier times the site (maybe a village?) was called just ‘Pipe’. We found that even before that the name was ‘Great Pipe’ and was called that because of the flowing wells there that were sent by conduit to Lichfield. The question is: Is there or was there actually a single spot or well that was called ‘Great Pipe’? or were there many different wells that fed Lichfield’s water supply?

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  6. Related to Wells & Springs, I have a theory about Lichfield Reservoir….Since there is so much old deep red sandstone in the area around the reservoir (not just the building stones, but also the raw material seen in the bank at the top of Wissage Lane I wondered if the origin of the site was actually a quarry supplying the construction of the cathedral being so close by as well….

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