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| St Chad's Well, at St Chad's Church, Lichfield. I'm sure it is much nicer in summer, when the vine growing over the roof is green, but at the moment it looks like a haystack on legs. |
Today is the
Feast of St Chad, so for my Saturday Snapshot I have some photos of his well, and a couple of old photos to show what it used to like in the past. Before moving to this area I’d never heard
of Chad, but it’s difficult to live here and not stumble across him somewhere,
for he was Bishop of the ancient Saxon kingdom of Mercia. Tamworth, where I
live, was the capital of this realm, and St Chad established his Episcopal seat
at Lichfield, where I once worked on the local paper, and now volunteer in the
Oxfam book shop.
I think about
him sometimes when I’m on one of my daily walks because, according to Bede in ‘A
History of the English Church and People’, he went about on foot rather than on
horseback, and was reluctant to change this ‘pious exercise’,
which he loved. His archbishop considered it more fitting that Chad should
ride, and on one occasion insisted on helping him on to a horse, but I like to
imagine the saint flouting the order when his superior was out of the way, and
continuing to stride about the countryside.
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| St Chad's Well, drawn by William Stukeley in 1736. |
He became Bishop
of Mercia in 669 and immediately made Lichfield the centre of his see (rather
than Repton, in Derbyshire). He built a house near the church and close by a
spring fed a pool where, according to 16th century antiquarian John Leland, ‘St
Chad was wont naked to stand in the water and pray’.
There is
still a well in the churchyard at St Chad’s, presumably fed by the spring, but its
location and form seem to have changed over the years. In 1833, local physician James Rawson described it as having
‘degenerated into a most undignified puddle, more than 6 feet deep’ and said it
was choked with ‘mud and filth’. Thanks to him, the water supply was improved,
and a protective octagonal building erected, which must have been far more
attractive than the lacklustre garden feature erected at the end of 1940s, when
the well seems to have been moved. There’s a small square of water set into drab
paving slabs, covered by an unimaginative tiled roof, which perches on top of
four wooden supports.
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| The 19th century building which covered the well. |
St Chad died on
March 2, 672 . Bede, writing some 60 years later, tells us that the burial
place was covered in a wooden tomb in form of little house, with a small opening,
so people could put a hand through to take some of the dust. “They mix this in water
and give it to sick men or beasts to drink, by which means their ailment is
quickly relieved and they are restored to the longed for joys of health,” he
adds - but doesn’t say whether they used water from the well to create this macabre
medicine.
Bede also
describes how a wandering ‘madman’ spent a night in the church where the body
was housed, and was miraculously found to be ‘in his right mind’ the following
morning!
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| The well: people thrown coins into the water, and make a wish, but my wish would be for it to look more like a well! |
During the
Medieval period, pilgrims flocked to Lichfield Cathedral to see Chad’s shrine, but
his relics were moved during the Reformation, although you can still see the
Chapel of St Chad’s Head, where the Saint’s head was once displayed to the
faithful, which strikes me as being a particularly grisly custom. Bones now
housed at St Chad’s Cathedral in Birmingham – the Gothic extravaganza created
by Pugin – are said to be those of the saint.
Saturday
Snapshot is hosted by Alyce at http://athomewithbooks.net/ where
you can see photos from other participants all over the world.
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| A statue of St Chad stands in a niche above the door to St Chad's Church. |
Sources: http://lichfieldlore.co.uk/2012/03/18/well-being/
(an excellent site on Lichfield’s rich heritage); http://www.stchads.org.uk/ (St Chad’s
Church has a website and a fascinating guidebook); http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/arch-841-1/dissemination/pdf/oxfordar1-50626_1.pdf (report of archeological dig at the well
site)
