Well Hidden

Given the extent to which Cornwall has been scoured and re-scoured by well-enthusiasts, you wouldn’t think there were old Christian holy wells yet to come to wider attention, yet accidentally I found one. Down Well Street in Callington is this very humble spring, the Lady’s Well or Pipe Well, once the main water supply for the town and covered in its little well house in 1816, a plaque informs us. The water still flows copiously but Callington’s citizens are now prevented from falling down the steps by a spectacularly ugly set of railings which form a sad contrast to the exuberant mural on the wall next to the well. The church, technically a chapel-of-ease to the old parish church at St Dominic until relatively recently, is dedicated to the Virgin Mary which fits in with the old title of the well. How it has escaped the attention of all the many, many writers on Cornish wells I can’t imagine, though it may be that none of them ever visited so prosaic a place as Callington to look for them.