St. Chad's, Lichfield - St. Chad's Well

St. Chad's Well	History Well Dressing Well Dressing Gallery

ST. CHAD'S WELL is situated a little to the west of the church and on the other side of the brook (now culverted).

According to tradition, the well is the spring in which this Chad stood to pray and where he baptised his converts to the Christian faith in a kingdom where the people were still largely pagan.

Tradition

The pagan Anglo-Saxons had begun settling in Britain in the fifth century. In common with other pre-Christian religions, their deities were associated with natural objects and phenomenon, and natural features such as groves and glades were considered sacred places. Springs, where the pure, life-giving water emerged mysteriously from the ground, were held to be particularly important and were often associated with healing.

It had been the policy of the church since Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) not to destroy pagan holy sites, but to rededicate them to Christ and to adapt any rituals associated with them to Christian ends.

In this way, we hope that the people, seeing that their temples are not destroyed, may abandon their error and, flocking more readily to their accustomed resorts, may come to know and adore the true God.

- Gregory the Great, 601

In many cases, springs and wells held holy by pagan peoples came to be used for Christian baptism. It is quite possible, therefore, that the spring at Stowe (which is Saxon for ‘holy place’) had been a pagan holy site long before it became a Christian site.

History

Stowe-church is in the est end of the towne, whereas is St Cedd's well, a thinge of pure water, where is seen a stone in the bottom of it, on which some say that Cedde was wont nakyd to stand in the water and pray. At this stone Cedd had his oratorie in the tyme of Wulphere Kynge of the Merchis.

- John Leland, 1543

Unfortunately, it is not until 1543–a time much nearer to our own than that of Chad–that John Leland provides the earliest historical record of a well or spring at Stowe associated with the saint. Although the tradition was clearly established at that time, the question remains: how much of the story is history and how much legend?

No further useful information is provided until 1781, when John Snape produced his Plan of the City and Close of Lichfield, which seems to show the well as the central feature of an ornamental garden.

The well at this time was apparently in a state of deterioration.

In any case, by 1833, the well basin had become filled up with mud and filth; and on top of this impurity a stone had been placed, which was described by the sight-showers as the identical stone on which St. Chad used to kneel and pray!

- James Rawson, 1864

Rawson goes on to relate how this state of affairs was remedied in the 1840s when money was raised by public subscription for the reconstruction of the well and the erection of an octagonal stone building over it.

An account produced following an investigation in 1923 clearly shows how the well worked. Some 25 ft from the ‘well’ itself was a shaft about 12 ft deep, and ‘in the rock at the bottom was a small fissure out of which the water came’. The water was piped from this point (under its own pressure) into the well basin, from where an overflow pipe led to the nearby brook.

Twentieth Century

The enthusiasm which must have been required for this to be achieved seems not to have been passed on to the succeeding generations, because almost exactly a hundred years later, in 1941, the Bishop of Lichfield, appointed a commission to consider the future of the well.

The well had been so neglected that nothing remained at the bottom of the shaft but a few inches of stagnant water covered with a green scum.

- appeal leaflet, 1949

It is also interesting what different generations considered to be the appropriate treatment of the site. The achievement of the nineteenth-century stewards of the well was dismissed as ‘a vertical tube built of engineering bricks’, covered ‘with a gloomy sentry-box of stone rather like those associated with market weighing machines of the period’!

New plans were drawn up for the site.

The well will be restored to its proper level, and rebuilt in simple stonework on a square plan, with a deep surrounding step on the lines of the ancient Holy Wells, of which some still survive. It will have an open roof of hand-beaten tiles, about seventeen feet square, which will be supported by massive oak posts, and a space round the well will be paved with old flagstones.

- appeal leaflet, 1949

The original intention was for the Littleworth Cottages, which adjoined the site, to be renovated, but unfortunately they were found to have deteriorated beyond repair and were replaced by the new Well Cottage, which was built as a residence for a caretaker for the well and well garden. To accommodate the new cottage, the well itself was actually moved a short distance further away from the road.

In July, 1947, the foundation stone for the cottage was laid by the Princess Royal (Princess Mary, sister to George VI). Two years later, the cottage was officially opened by HRH Duchess of Gloucester, although work on the well was not fully completed until 1951.

In February, 1952, the well became a listed building.

Pilgrimage

Pilgrimages to Chad’s shrine began almost immediately after his death, but it is not known when the well became a destination for pilgrims. As far back as we have historical evidence for the well, it is known to have been associated with healing and to have attracted visitors.

Pilgrimages to the well have seen a revival in this century. From 1922 to 1933 there was an annual Roman Catholic pilgrimage to the well, which was often attended by over 1,000 people. On the first of these, a small piece of one of the bones venerated as being of Chad was carried so that the saint could be bodily present on the pilgrimage.

A procession of pilgrims

Pilgrim groups visiting the well in recent years have included Affirming Catholicism and the Orthodox Community of St Chad. This year, the diocesan pilgrimage to Lichfield to celebrate 1300 years since the founding of the first Lichfield Cathedral included St. Chad's Well. There have, of course, also been many individual visitors who have come to walk where Chad once walked and to spend time in quiet prayer and reflection.

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