Sunday and Saint Neot

I have written a lot about water, its practical necessity and also its slightly more important religious role.  Now whether that be a well with Mary guarding and looking down with such reverence or a pagan well worshipped but it stirred a few memories.  Which was my favourite well, well it will have to be the one at the top St.Keynes well, about a mile or so from the beautiful crystal quartz stones of Duloe stone circle.  It carries all that dark, dank, lichen strewn glamour of a proper well, ferns and greenery clinging to the sides and a tumble of water.

But yesterday transferring photos from the old computer to the external drive I came across another well in Cornwall, after beating my brain as to where it was, remembered the pub called London Inn and there it was St.Neot.  So nostalgia here it comes;  A bright, slightly windy day, as we wandered round this linear village.  The pub was next to the church, and the church had an interesting  worked early medieval stone.

The well head was situated down a green lane and across a small field and the water came from the rock behind it.

It was dedicated to St.Neots, one of the stories told of this saint is that he would stand daily in the well reciting the Psalter, one day by the revelation of an angel, he found three fishes in the well. St.Neot was instructed (presumably in a dream) that he could only take one fish from the water. One day when he was ill his servant Barius took two for a meal and cooked them, the saint horrified told him to take the two fish back to the well, and miraculously they were restored to living fish, good Celtic tale there!  Originally the well would have been a spring with boulders around.

small offerings at the well