St Katherine's Well, Winchelsea

Dedication: Saint Catherine

Location: Winchelsea

Coordinates: 50.92645N, 0.71101W

Grid reference: TQ906176

Heritage designation: none

It is not immediately clear where St Katherine's Well derives its name from. There were, at one point, as many as three churches in Winchelsea (St Leonard's, St Giles', and St Thomas'), but none of them were dedicated to St Catherine, or appear to have had any links to her cult. Indeed, the traditional spelling of the well's name, with a "K" for the first letter of the saint's name instead of a "C", is very unusual for this part of Britain, and is rarely seen outside of Scotland. There are, therefore, two possible explanations for the origin of this site's dedication to St Catherine: either the well was linked to the nearby medieval friary of Winchelsea (which was dedicated to the Virgin Mary) in some way, and was given its name by the friar during the medieval period, or the site is a post-medieval folly that was constructed, probably in the 18th century, to give the hillside some interest. The latter is much more likely, especially given the fact that the friary already had a well within its grounds, so would have had no use for a spring on the other side of the town.

I have been unable to find any truly historical references to the existence of this well, and the earliest mention of it that I have found dates from 1850, when William Durrant Cooper, in his History of Winchelsea, mentioned a "slightly chalybeate" spring called "St. Katherine's Well, situate half way up the hill leading from Rye, and below Cook's Green". Apart from this, the only other notable reference to the existence of a well of "St Katherine" in Winchelsea that I have come across takes the form of a photograph published in Frederick Andrew Inderwick's Story of King Edward and New Winchelsea (1892), entitled "ST. KATHERINE'S WELL"; the main image above is this.

Intriguingly, St Katherine's Well has an alternative title, "Queen Elizabeth's Well", that it is reputed to have gained in the late 16th century, when Elizabeth I visited Winchelsea. After travelling to the town in 1573, Elizabeth is said to have liked it so much that she dubbed the place "Little London". It is possible that, if St Katherine's Well truly has medieval origins, then Elizabeth, being, as she was, strongly set against the cult of holy wells (for example, it was on the direct orders of her Privy Council that the chapel covering Ffynnon Feugan, in Pembrokeshire, was destroyed), may have deliberately had the well renamed in her honour to suppress any surviving remnants of Catholocism in the area. Of course, it is unlikely that she would have had St Katherine's Well altered, but left its neighbour, St Leonard's Well, intact, so this is a rather improbable suggestion.

It is not clear when exactly the structure shown in the image above was constructed, but it is undoubtedly no older than the 18th century. Today, this structure still exists, seemingly in a mostly unaltered form.

A portion of the late 19th century Ordnance Survey map of Winchelsea, which marks the well, but does not name it; the same can be said for all other historic OS maps

Access:

The well is located a few metres off a public path that leads down the hillside; reportedly, this can become extremely slippy after wet weather, so care should be taken if visiting after heavy rainfall.