Robin Mills Fine Art Photography
St Augustine's Well
Photography and story by Robin Mills for Marshwood Vale Magazine
At the top of Abbey Street in Cerne Abbas, starting at an iron lych-gate, a path runs down the side of surely one of the most tranquil, picturesque churchyards in Dorset. At the end of the path, a small avenue of majestic lime trees leads down a slope to the well.
St Augustine's well, sometimes called "the Silver Well", is fed by a natural spring, the water flowing freely from beneath the chalk hills above. Behind the Abbey ruins, the ancient chalk figure of the Cerne Giant strides unashamedly across the steep hill. Clear spring water bubbles up incessantly from beneath the well, winter and summer, collecting in a small dark pool, leaves and the occasional coin lining its bed. From there it speeds off down a stone channel, eventually feeding a duck pond, which in turn flows into the river Cerne. Two stone pedestals, the left hand one bearing a faint carving of St Catherine's Wheel, mark the approach to the pool, presumably relics of the demolished Abbey. A recent stone sculpture, with a flowing water design across its surface, stands to one side.
Leaving aside both pagan and Christian history, it is a place for quiet contemplation at any time. In summer, the light is filtered through the scented leaves of the lime trees, creating a cool refuge on a warm day. In winter, (although some may be reminded of Eeyore's Gloomy Place - of course for A.A. Milne fans a warm memory) the atmosphere is just as evocative.
Pre-Christian settlements were often both centred on sacred natural features, e.g. the spring, and the monuments the inhabitants constructed: for example at Cerne Abbas, the Giant, also the Trendle earthwork nearby. It is therefore quite possible that these natural and man-made features are the basis for a religious centre of some significance in early times.
In about 1620, in his "Survey of Dorsetshire", Thomas Gerard described the spring as "heretofore covered with a Chappell dedicated to St Augustine", which, together with the masonry visible at the site today, suggests a covered shrine of some sort. He also recorded the tradition which continues to the present day, that when St Augustine visited these parts preaching Christianity, he struck down his staff on the ground, from where immediately there flowed "a quicke fountaine, that served to baptize many".
There are often links between known history and traditions, despite the time span involved, and Augustine's story is no exception. Sent by Gregory the Great in 596 AD as head of a delegation of 40 monks specifically to help spread Christianity amongst the English, he was able to baptize the Saxon king Ethelbert. Part of his mission would have been to counter the worship of idols which, at that time, was still widespread. Perhaps the Cerne Giant represented a local deity called Helith, though whoever the figure represented, his explicitly pagan nature would have been reason enough to visit. According to William of Malmesbury (1095-1143) Augustine's reception at Cerne was less than friendly, and his party was driven away by the villagers with cows' or fishes' tails fastened to their clothes. Augustine's insulted response was to call upon his God to ensure that all the children born subsequently to the villagers would have tails, whereupon they repented and the curse was removed.
Entertaining though these stories are, we have no direct evidence of Augustine visiting Cerne, but it is possible that Augustine founded a religious house on the site of the Abbey, which didn't formally come into existence until 987AD nearly 4 centuries later. Augustine died in 604AD, having been assured a place in the history of the Christian Church as the first Archbishop of Canterbury.
The well's alternative name, "the Silver Well", may originate from another character in the story of Cerne Abbas. St Edwold was a brother of King Edmund of East Anglia, who met his death as a martyr at the hands of heathen invaders in 869AD. Edwold fled his home as a refugee, and seems to have finished up living as a hermit in the Cerne Valley, his search for refuge prompted by a dream in which he envisaged a holy well. At Cerne, he is said to have given silver pennies to a shepherd in return for being shown the location of the well, which he realised he had seen in his dream. There he built a hermitage, where he lived until his death in 871AD, a century or so before the foundation of the abbey.
Thus we have three legends: the pagan origins which connect the Giant and the well; the story of St Augustine bringing Christianity to the valley; and St Edwold, 9th C refugee whose quest for sanctuary brought him to a holy well. Myth, legend, or fact, the stories do shed a little light on the questions that spring to mind when visiting this mysterious place, but mystery remains. Our ancestors considered rivers and springs to be life-giving, with healing properties, even deities in themselves: maybe some faint echo of the respect they held for places such as St Augustine's Well resonates somewhere inside us today.
Ref: The Cerne Giant, by Rodney Castleden, The Dorset Publishing Company 1996.
Robin Mills. January 2009
