St. Blaise's Well
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St Blaise's Well may be found in the Bishop's garden in Bromley. Its chalybeate water is reputed to have healing properties.
It was much frequented, not only on account of the medicinal virtues of the water, but for the sake of certain indulgences (or remittances of penance) which Lucas, legate to Pope Sixtus IV, granted to all such as should offer up their orisons at this oratory of St. Blaze, in the three holy-days of Pentecost. The oratory fell to ruins after the Reformation, the well was filled up, and its site forgotten. It was discovered in 1756, when an account of the discovery, and the use of the water, which is a chalybeate, was published by Thomas Reynolds, surgeon. [1]
The former palace of the bishops of Rochester was erected in 1777 in room of an older structure. The site was once part of a manor belonging to the see of the bishops of Rochester as early as the reign of Ethelbert in the 6th century.
To find the well face the bishop's palace, go left through the new edifice, the St. Blaise Building [2]. Continue past this to the end of the car park. To the right is St Blaise's Well which, with an associated chapel, fell into decay around the Reformation. A garden structure built around the well by Coles Child was destroyed in a snowstorm in 1887. [3] The flow of water from the spring diminished to a trickle, though it was still detectable when Horsburgh visited the site in 1928 [7]. The survival of the well, at least as an identifiable site, became unlikely under these circumstances and the departure of the Bishops of Rochester from the Palace and subsequent housing development made it virtually inevitable. (Williams 1999 p. 1).
[edit] External links
- St Blaise's Well, Bromley, Kent [4]
- 'Bromley', The Environs of London: volume 4: Counties of Herts, Essex & Kent (1796), pp. 307-23. [5]
- A Bromley Walk [6]
[edit] References
^ Williams, Barrie (1999). St Blaise's Well, Bromley, Kent (html). SOURCE - the Holy Wells Journal Issue 6 (Summer 1998) 1. Source Online Archive. Retrieved on September 10, 2006.
- Horsburgh, E.L.S., Bromley, p. 100.
- Wilson, Thomas, An Accurate Description of Bromley, p. 23.
- Dunkin, John, History and Antiquities of Bromley, pp. 14-15.
