YOU MIGHT EASILY imagine that the avenue  of  pollarded  and misshapen trees on the horizon in my picture are marching into battle  like the forest of ents in Lord of the Rings – and  that the huge, time-bleached,  trunk in the foreground is one of their fallen comrades.  You can find this  striking arboreal procession just south of the  Oxfordshire village of Wilcote, on its strange way through medieval farmland to Lady Well, one of Britain’s many surviving holy wells.

You might think too, if you’ve never been to such a place, that holy wells are more or less forgotten, unvisited and have lost their power. Not so.   Belief in their healing power and that of many other such ancient places of spirit and sanctuary is  very much alive, as it has been for millennia. Wells and springs have always been regarded as magical.  Our ancestors appreciated rather better than we sometimes do that  without water there would be no life.

I  visited Lady Well this Sunday just past.  Though it’s only a half hour drive from my house I doubt I would have thought of going there  but for an entry in a new book by Janet Bord: Holy Wells In Britain, A Guide (Heart of Albion Press, 2008). She has  produced many books on subjects related to our not-so-Hyddenworld. This one is the companion to her earlier Cure and Curses: Ritual and Cult at Holy Wells. Her description of the well, its near-secret location and the fact that it was once a place regularly visited on Palm Sunday by locals wanting to make liquorice water for the cure of various ailments, was so seductive, I went to visit it.

The mile-long downhill path to the well starts very near the village church, which is where I parked my car.  I immediately had an encounter which affirmed my belief that wells attract good spirits. There was a couple sitting in the churchyard on a seat placed there in memory of someone dead who had loved the place. They had a large skittish dog with them and they sat as if on tenterhooks, expecting imminent disaster. I said hello and asked if the dog was safe since it looked almost out of control. They said it probably was but as they had only had it two days and it was a rescue dog on its first outing, they were not sure.  I guessed that their uneasy posture had to do with the fear that the dog, named Jerry,  was about to go AWOL. The gate into the church yard was firmly closed and I made sure to close it after me when I ventured nearer to ask if they knew where the path to the holy well was.

The truth was I already knew the answer because it was clearly marked on my OS map. But I have found that asking directions in villages and explaining what one is about often elicits something interesting or unexpected from otherwise reticent inhabitants. The man said he had never heard of a holy well but if the path I wanted was the one down past the church and across the field then it led to a ‘rather a special place’. He had walked it once before and remembered it. There were strange trees he said, a lovely old path, and… the expression on his face said the rest. Like so many people in Britain, he might not know about holy wells but he certainly appreciated the spirit of place. He volunteered to take me part of the way while his partner looked after the dog. ‘The path splits and people here don’t exactly make it obvious which way to go,’  he explained darkly. I knew what he meant. There are often places which communities like to keep to themselves: just as there are common lands, there are common secrets.

He was a lovely, warm,  man with a Dickensian face; she looked a happy woman. You can tell  when people are in love, they exude an inclusive, happy spirit.   My guide  did rather better than simply direct me where to go. He knew as well exactly  when to stop, leaving me at the point where I saw the first of the avenue of trees Janet Bord describes.  You must find the rest out for yourself  his parting smile seemed to say.

 It was the most benign of introductions to a special place and a reminder of why they survive in peoples’ consciousness down the centuries, their history forgotten, their names changed,  but lines of communication with the long-dead still intact – they have a spirit which is  very infectious. Good things happened there in the past and these  engender more in the present.

The trees were a mixture of ash and oak, much pollarded and very ancient. It was obvious they were cared for in the best possible of ways – apart from the regularly pollarding they were left alone, to thrive, to thicken, to  grow again. Many were hollowed out with time, others split, a few fallen.  Some had been replaced with young ash. They led in two rows down a deep fold in  the landscape, the air increasingly damp, the hedges and old trees mossy, the distant buildings made of  mellow Cotswold stone; and the first wild flowers, snow drops and yellow aconite,  beginning to show.

No-one was about but many had been there, walking down the way I went in times more superstitious than our own, troubled people seeking guidance, trusting people filled with hope, lovers, children, farm workers and servants from the Manor by the church. This last I knew because Janet Bord reports that water from the well was carried up for consumption at the Manor.  As I walked  I was therefore alone yet not alone. It was indeed a special place.

THE WELL, AS MY SECOND picture shows, was very well protected by a circular stone wall, gated for access. The lock was rusted, the well filled with hart’s tongue fern, water flowing out from under the wall to waterlogged land down-slope of it. From a spot nearby another spring flowed into that same  area; then I saw a third… and a fourth.  Water issued forth everywhere. The day was damp and dull, the vegetation all about leafless, rotten trees lay prone and mossy in running water. Forget Hollywood film sets, this  seemed more like the kind of place where Arthur might have found Excalibur.  

Nearby the well, bent and gnarled like an old witch, which it probably was, was a hawthorn tree covered in black ivy. Hanging from its branches were a few scraps of white cloth, left behind by spirit worshippers. Sometimes you’ll find crosses of twigs, wound round with wool but I saw none there.  Nor evidence of fires lit at dusk and invocations made.

People sometimes say that the old traditions must have been interesting to observe; and folklorists ‘collect’ them, as if they are collectible.  They are not in any true spiritual sense collectable at all but  there is no need for them to be. We who stand there now are the tradition, we its living proof and what we do its time-honoured rituals. A place like Lady Well reminds visitors that we don’t need special training, or to be antiquarians, or have a special set of beliefs, or to be knowledgeable about anything much at all, to be a part of things: we simply need to be ourselves and open to the natural world it is our brief turn to occupy.  

I did not on this occasion  leave anything behind other than my thoughts. It may seem strange but when I take photographs of such a place I rarely leave offerings as well.  For me, one excludes the other. I will prefer to go back camera-less another time to tie ribbons of my own to the old witch of a tree and add my scrap of spirit to a place that came before I did and will be there long after… and anyway, it was getting dark and the trees in the avenue above seemed to be looming and about to move towards me.

Later, driving home, I think I made more sense of why that couple sat so edgily on  the seat, as if uncertain of the future. They were middle aged and new in their relationship. I guess the decision to get a rescue dog was an important one for them, in some way a cementing  of their love, a commitment to caring together for a life in addition to their own. My arrival disturbed a private moment but the spirit of the place worked its magic and turned it into something that somehow included me.  

Next time I go to Wilcote the air will be warmer and drier and violets and celandine will have arrived. I’ll tie ribbons in the tree for Jerry and his owners, as well as for myself and  those I love, and pay homage to  the spirit of place,  which resides  in all of us.  

 Lady Well can be found on OS Explorer Map 180 grid reference SP374147.  The Heart of Albion Press’s full  catalogue is at www.hoap.co.uk