The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘saint’

The intrepid duo of Kal and myself were out and about again in the middle of February. Call it my birthday excursion, if you will, for this Aquarian and Antiquarian had just arrived at another arbitrary date in his personal calendar. More importantly, Kal and I were out in the bright sunshine of the Welsh hills near to Llangollen – a wise choice for a destination due to its proximity and beauty. We had several sites in mind but our starting point would turn out to be the most exciting and interesting of them all – Vale Crucis abbey’s ruined frame just west of Llangollen’s cute little town, and deposited next to the River Dee which dominates the area and splits the town in two.

Finding the abbey was easy. We came in on the A542 and stayed on that road as we passed through Llangollen. As the road rose out of the town a brown tourist sign suddenly directed us right and down to a car park right next to the abbey itself on the periphery of a camping site.

Approach to Vale Crucis abbey

The front of the abbey is an imposing arch of wonderful symmetry crowned by a petalled circle. Some fine and no doubt sacred proportions seem to have been used in the construction of this abbey, although we didn’t go around measuring such things – we had far more interesting work to be doing. We set foot inside the main hall section and from there we barely moved for the whole visit because we found so much to work with!

Info board at Vale Crucis

A visitor sign at the entrance held our attention for a moment as we discovered that the abbey had been built by the Cistercian Order in 1201 C.E. What a wonderful job they had done, too. The masonry involved in this site is gorgeous. However, it wasn’t the architecture we had come to admire so we stepped into the main hall and once we had finished being astonished at the architecture we settled down to some dowsing.

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Having just returned from a visit to Glastonbury with Kal (more about that very soon) I wanted to do something for the Summer Solstice and to keep it local. Where better, then, for me to go than to our local holy well – Plegmund’s Well in the little hamlet of Plemstall which adjoins the larger village of Mickle Trafford in Cheshire.

I had visited Plegmund’s Well earlier in the year on what was something of an uneventful excursion (hence no post), but now there was a good reason to go again because at this time of the year a local committee have revived the ancient ceremony of well-dressing. On my previous visit I had tested the energies of the well. They were weak to the point of non-existence, and the only energy that I could find was that left by people’s devotions (i.e. intentions of good-will, or adoring energy). No earth energy at all, which was unusual for a well, as running water, especially primal water that has passed through rock and minerals is usually quite energetically active. Here, there was none of that, although a set of iron railings prevented me from seeing inside the well itself (iron again! are people insane? iron at a sacred site nullifies energy!).

Who the smeg was Plegmund?

So, if this is Plegmund’s Well, who was Plegmund? Well, it turns out he was quite the scholar in the time of King Alfred. Here’s what the interweb has to say about the fellow:

“He was of Mercian descent and is believed to have lived as a hermit on what was at that time an island which became known as Plegmundeshamm or “The Isle of Chester” at Plemstall in Cheshire. He would have been affiliated to a monastic community either at nearby Chester or near the site of the current church of St Peter, Plemstall.” (source: Wikipedia)

The well dressing ceremony took place on Sunday 20th June, but the panels of creatively decorated flowers stays in place for the Solstice Day too. M and I went down to the church of St.Peter’s that was the original island that Plegmund lived on. There we found that we were fortuitously in time for a bit of tea and cake. As a huge cake lover I was particularly pleased.

We bumped into a friend of ours – a lady who was the last person to have been baptised in the waters of the well. That had been a tradition for all the children of the area for as long as anyone could recall. We chatted about the well-dressing ceremony, got a bit more background history, then went off to experience the well itself.

The Dressed Well

Britannia - emblem of The Lady in Britain

The lady depicted in the floral decorations around the well was Britannia – a mother goddess, a genius loca of the British Isles, and a personification of the nation. Britannia is the kind of emblem that has such modern connotations of nationalism, and yet has been a depiction of the Mother Goddess (The Lady) for so long that she inhabits the corners of the mind of every denizen of these isles, whether they realise it or not.

What I did do was to create a posy of wild flowers after asking permission from the local plants, and threw it into the well dedicating it to The Lady. You’ll see why I did that dedication when I reveal my Glastonbury experience soon.

No water flows through the well now since the nearby Shell plant lowered the water table of everywhere nearby when they extracted all the local water for their own purposes. This probably accounts for the lack of earth energy at this sacred site. That makes the ceremony of well dressing in this case is now just an echo, a memory of what its purpose once was, and a way of bringing local people together – a positive aspect and worthy for sure.

Britannia composed of seashells and flowers

Happy Solstice to all you druidic and dowsing people out there. May you keep alive, nay found your own local tradition to celebrate flow of the seasons.

Gwas.