St Laurence's Well, Peterborough

Dedication: Saint Laurence

Location: Peterborough Cathedral

Status: destroyed and lost

The first monastery at Peterborough is said to have been founded in the mid 7th century by Peada, son of the pagan King Penda of Mercia, who is perhaps best known for his part in the martyrdom of St Oswald at the Battle of Maserfield. This early monastic foundation did not last, however, as it seems to have been destroyed, along with countless other institutions across the country, by the Great Heathen Army in the late 9th century. When the monastery was reconstructed a century later, it was placed under the order of St Benedict, and made fully Catholic. Undoubtedly, it is either at this point or shortly afterwards that a chapel of St Laurence was built in the grounds of the monastery, along with, or perhaps over, a new holy well dedicated to the same saint. The well and chapel were certainly not older than this point.

Regardless of the site's exact age, St Laurence's Well did not survive for long. The spring seems to have been used for healing purposes (it was certainly not the abbey's main water supply: this was nearby St Chad's Well), and it was perhaps for this reason that the institution's infirmary was constructed beside St Laurence's Chapel. Although I have been unable to find any exact dates for the building of the infirmary, George S. Phillips, in his Guide to Peterborough Cathedral (1843), attested that the chapel, and thus undoubtedly the well, predated it.

The popularity of St Laurence's Well must have been exceptional, because, in the late 13th century, it was one of only a handful of Britain's holy wells to come under the attack of Oliver Sutton, the then Bishop of Lincoln, who had something of a vendetta against holy wells that was seemingly very unusual for the time (although he does not appear to have found as much issue with the holy wells in his own bishopric). Reportedly, in 1291, Sutton sent an inhibition, presumably to the abbot of Peterborough, denouncing the veneration of St Laurence's Well. It appears that the site was subsequently destroyed, and, in 1686, Simon Gunton noted that "no footſteps" of the well remained, in his History of the Church of Peterburgh [sic]. Indeed, the well had disappeared so long beforehand that Gunton was only able to guess at its former location.

It is interesting to note that the destruction of St Laurence's Well almost certainly occasioned the monks' transformation of the simple abbey well in the cloisters into St Chad's Well, a new attraction for pilgrims. The chapel of St Laurence survived, however, and was still used, solely by the infirmary, until the Reformation.

Of course, with St Chad's Well taking its place, the well of St Laurence appears to have become almost completely forgotten. Apart from Simon Gunton and Robert Plot, who mentioned the destruction of the site in his Natural History of both Staffordshire (1686) and Oxfordshire (1677), very few authors seem to have been aware of it. In 1893, R. C. Hope afforded the well a few lines in The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England, but he clearly did not know much about its history, and only claimed, without obvious grounds, that "vows were here made, and alms offered" at the spring.

Today, the exact location of St Laurence's Well still remains a mystery, although there can be no doubt that it was situated somewhere in the immediate vicinity of the infirmary, perhaps beneath it.