Wells and Springs

Ffynnon means a well or spring, and it is one of the commonest elements in Welsh place names. Follow the ones in Powys and you find a pattern that runs from the sixth century to the nineteenth without an obvious break.

Saints and water

Early Welsh church sites are frequently associated with a spring, and the association is usually attached to the founding saint. Ffynnon Fyllin at Llanfyllin, wells dedicated to Cynog in Brecknockshire, the spring at Pennant Melangell.

Whether the water came first or the church did is generally impossible to establish. What can be said is that the pairing is consistent, that it occurs across the Celtic west, and that it points to a continuity of practice at particular places that predates Christianity in Wales.

The wells were used for baptism, for cures, and as places to make small offerings.

What they were used for

Specific complaints, usually. The Welsh material is precise about this and the specialisation is one of the more interesting things about it.

Eye wells were the commonest — a great many springs across Wales had a reputation for treating eye disease, which in a population working outdoors in smoke-filled houses was endemic. Others treated skin conditions, rheumatism, warts, rickets in children, or infertility.

The ritual mattered as much as the water. Approaching in a particular direction, at a particular hour or on a particular saint's day, drinking a set number of mouthfuls, leaving something behind.

Offerings

Pins. Bent pins dropped into the water are recorded at wells across Wales and turn up in excavation. Bending an object before offering it is very old practice.

Rags. A strip of cloth tied to a nearby tree or bush, the idea being that as the rag rotted the ailment would fade. Rag trees are still occasionally found, and modern offerings at some Welsh wells are a live and somewhat contentious matter, because synthetic fabric does not rot.

Coins and stones.

The Reformation, and what happened next

Well cults were an obvious target. Pilgrimage was suppressed, chapels at wells were pulled down, and the practice was condemned from pulpits for two centuries.

It carried on. Diocesan visitation records and antiquarian accounts show people still going to wells in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in numbers, sometimes for cures and sometimes for reasons they could not have explained if asked.

What did change was the framing. By the eighteenth century the language had shifted from the saint to the mineral: the water was efficacious because of what was dissolved in it rather than because of who had blessed it.

Which is how you get the spa towns

That shift is the direct link between the holy well and Llandrindod Wells.

Llanwrtyd's sulphur spring, Llangammarch's barium, Builth's saline and Llandrindod's several were all marketed on chemistry, with medical endorsements and a pump room. The visitors arrived by train and paid.

But the underlying proposition — go to this specific water, drink it in a prescribed way, and be cured — is the same one, and in some cases the same spring.

Looking for them

Place names are the way in. Ffynnon followed by a saint's name, a colour, or an attribute. Field names on the tithe apportionment record a great many wells that have since been lost or filled.

On the ground, look for a stone-lined basin, a wall-head with a spout, a cistern, or occasionally a small building over a spring. Many are overgrown, some are in field corners, and a fair number are on private land.

Coflein records the ones that have been identified, and Francis Jones's 1954 survey remains the standard catalogue.

Treat any that are still visited with the same courtesy you would show a church. Some are quiet places that people use, and a rag on a thorn tree is not litter.