Our Lady's Well, Whitekirk

Dedication: Saint Mary the Virgin

Location: Whitekirk

Coordinates: 56.02614N, -2.6464W

Grid reference: NT598816

Status: destroyed

The original church of Whitekirk is said to have been founded in the 8th century by the very local St Baldred, who founded several other churches and monasteries in the immidiate vicinity, where his medieval cult was centred. Intriguingly, unlike Baldred's other churches, Whitekirk does not bear the dedication of its founder, and it appears that it never has. Presumably, Baldred himself placed this church under the patronage of St Mary, as is known to have happened elsewhere, perhaps because of the nearby holy well, which was almost certainly once a pagan sacred spring.

Despite the church's age, the earliest known reference to its existence dates from 1128, when it was attached to the newly founded Holyrood Abbey. It is not clear whether the site had any special significance by this time, but it seems to have really gained popularity in later centuries, particularly after the involvement of the famed Black Agnes of Dunbar in the late 1200s, the details of which were recorded in a post-Reformation manuscript purportedly found in the Vatican Library by Sir David Baird, and transcribed in The Churches of Saint Baldred, by Adam Inch Ritchie (1833):

In 1294, when Edward First of England had defeated the Scots army near Dunbar, many of the army fled into that castle, then commanded by Black Anne [this should be Agnes], Countess of Dunbar, who, seeing the numbers within so great that the place must soon be surrendered, rather than fall into the hands of the enemies made her escape in the night, in order to have gone to Fife. But she receiving a hurt getting into the boat, and the wind being against her, was obliged to be landed on that part of the shore nearest to Fairknowe, to which she was carried. The English, however, ravaging the country, they were obliged to halt while a part of them past, during which time, being in great agony, she prayed to the Holy Mother, when an hermit came and told her, if she had faith, drink of that holy well, and she would soon find ease; when she did, and had no sooner done than she was perfectly recovered from all bruises, and made whole.

This miracle she made known to Andrew de Forman, Prior of Coldingham, and in the year following she built a chantrey in honour of our Lady, and endowed it with 40 merks [sic] a-year for ever.

The very same document, the exact date of which is uncertain, goes on to suggest that the well's popularity rocketed after this point. In 1309, the document claims that John Abernethy had a shrine of St Mary erected at the site, with the "assistance of the monks of Melrose", simply because the number of miracles that had recently occurred at the well were "so numerous".

By the mid 14th century, the shrine at Whitekirk seems to have been well established, and, according to George Chalmers, writing in Caledonia in 1810, the canons of nearby Holyrood (who owned the church, and had become rather rich as a result) were in permanent residence to attend to the multitude of pilgrims. Of course, it is important to remember that the shrine was clearly dependent on the existence of the well, and likely was more significant in the minds of medieval pilgrims than the church itself. In fact, it is said that Whitekirk was located on the pilgrim route from nearby St Andrews to Santiago de Compostela, as well as being a pilgrimage destination in itself; this would have produced yet more income.

However, the wealth of Whitekirk was soon to be devastated, as it was in 1356 that the soldiers of Edward III, who was then engaged in invading East Lothian, entered the church whilst Edward was attending to the army's ships, and stole the riches that were held therein. Some sources detail a variety of supposed divine punishments that befell Edward and his men following the event; for example, John of Fordun, a chronicler of the early 14th century who was alive at the time, reported that St Mary raised a storm so large that the sailors wished they had never entered the church. Additionally, Hector Boece, in his Scotorum Historia (1527), claimed that the church's rood cross fell on the head of the man who stripped the image of St Mary of her jewels, and, according to John Bellenden's translation of the work, "dang out" his brains. John Bellenden's full translation, dating from the late 16th century, of Boece's work was published in James Miller's History of Haddington in 1844:

Nocht lang efter, King Edward come to Hadingtoun, to the gret dammage of all pepill lyand thairabout. Ane part of his navy spulyeit the kirk of Our Lady, called the Quhit Kirk; and returnit with the spulye thairof to thair schippis. Bot thair sacralege was not long unpunist; for suddanly rais ane north wind, and raschit all thair shippis sa violently on the see bankis and sandis, that few of thaim eschapit, saif only sa mony as swame to land. King Edward, in contemptioun of God, becaus his navy was trubillit in this maner, pereswit all abbayis and religius placis quhan he come, with gret cruelte. Treuth is, ane Inglisman spulyeit all the ornamentis that was on the image of Our Lady, in the Quhite Kirk; and, incontinent, the crucifix fel doun on his heid, and dang out his harnis [brains].

Nonetheless, Whitekirk's popularity as a destination for pilgrimage does not seem to have been significantly affected by the event, and may even have been increased by it, as, in 1413, the aformentioned document from the Vatican Library asserts that "not less than 15,653" pilgrims, from "all nations", visited Whitekirk; the value of their offerings reportedly amounted to "1422 merks". It is not evident how accurate these statistics are, but they are undoubtedly very approximate, given the time. Indeed, Whitekirk was further benefitted by the reign of James I of Scotland, who, in 1430, constructed accommodation for pilgrims in the vicinity, and called the place White Chapel (until this point, the settlement had been known as "Hamer"), and is said to have visited often. The king's endorsement of the shrine undoubtedly made it even more popular with medieval pilgrims.

In fact, in 1435, the shrine and well enjoyed a visit from an important medieval figure, albeit in disguise: Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, the future Pope Pius II. He was sent here from Rome in the winter of that year, on a supposedly secret mission, and he landed ten miles from Whitekirk, after a reportedly "disastrous" (according to M. G. J. Kinloch's 1874 History of Scotland) journey. It is said that he immediately embarked on a pilgrimage to Whitekirk, walking barefoot despite the icy conditions; he was so cold and his feet so numb that, after visiting Whitekirk, he had to be carried back. According to Piccolomini's own testimony, this pilgrimage brought on gout that he suffered from for the rest of his life. Unsurprisingly, he does not appear to have particularly liked Scotland.

Shortly after, in 1437 (or 1438, according to some sources), Whitekirk became part of a plot to free the six year old James II from Edinburgh Castle, where he was apparently being kept in custody by Lord Crichton, who had been given partial control over James, as he was too young to rule. According to Cameos from English History, which was published in Monthly Packet of Evening Readings in 1869, Crichton was keeping James trapped in the castle "intending to seclude him from all other influences, and become absolute governor in his name". Not wanting this to happen, Queen Joan, James' mother, devised a plan to free her son: she managed to obtain permission to travel on a pilgrimage to Whitekirk, by boat, and before she embarked on that journey, she went to visit her son in Edinburgh Castle. Amongst the luggage carried from the castle to the vessel was a sizeable carved wooden chest, in which James II was secretly hidden; the boat then set off, but sailed, instead of to Whitekirk, to Stirling Castle, which was under the command of the king's other governor, Sir Alexander Livingston.

The subsequent kings of Scotland also seem to have favoured Whitekirk over other shrines, perhaps because of its proximity to Edinburgh. In particular, James IV appears to have been a frequent pilgrim to the holy well and shrine, according, at least, to his book of accounts. In volume 1 of Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland (1877), at least three examples of offerings to Whitekirk, all under the year 1497, appear:

Item, to Maister William Sandelandis, to ger say thre trentalis of messis [masses] in the Quhitkirk, . . iij llb.
Item, that samyn tyme, to him at the Kingis command, at the Quhitkirk, to dispone [give alms] to pure folk and lippir folk [poor folk and lepers], . . xx s.
Item, to the Kingis offerand in the Quhit kirk, . . xiiij s.

The sum of the money offered on these three occasions amounts to around £3,700 in today's money; clearly, the king's offerings alone would have secured the income of the canons working at the shrine, even without the additional, but admittedly much smaller, gifts given by regular pilgrims. Indeed, James' offerings did not stop there, and his accounts from 1504 to 1506 record a multitude of further offerings given by him to Whitekirk. The standard amount that James appears to have given not only to Whitekirk but to other chapels, on his arrival, is fourteen shillings, equivalent to around £620 today.

Of course, pilgrimage to the shrine effectively ceased at the Reformation, when the shrine was desecrated for a second, and final, time. The document from the Vatican Library (as mentioned earlier), which places the date of the shrine's destruction at around 1540, describes the site's demise:

Oliver Sinclair, being poisoned with the letters wrote to his master by that infamous wretch, his uncle Henry VIII. of England, asked leave of his king to build him an house near the White Chapel, which the other too easily granted; in building of which he pulled down the pilgrims' houses, and made use of the stones for his own house. Times growing worse instead of better, and the great men longing to enrich themselves with the Church Lands, as their neighbours in England had done, notwithstanding the great efforts of that apostolic man, Cardinal Beatoun, and many more now saints in Heaven, the pilgrims were no more safe. The offerings, as well as all the other lands, then valued at 750 merks annually, were seized, and the shrine was beat to pieces. That holy church also was made a parochial church for the preaching of heresy, and by them called Whitekirk.

The well, perhaps all that remained of the former pilgrimage destination, appears to have been completely forgotten about for the following few centuries, at least until 1845, when "Our Lady's Well" was mentioned by the Rev. James Wallace in the New Statistical Account of Scotland (oddly, the site was excluded from the Old Statistical Account several decades earlier), who reported that "drains and ditches" had "not left the pilgrim a drop to drink", and claimed that the well was once said to be "famous for the cure of barrenness". It is possible that this belief evolved after the Reformation, or that barrenness was only one of a number of problems that the well was, in medieval times, reputed to heal, because none of the small selection of documented pilgrims to the well went for this purpose: Black Agnes used the well to cure an unidentified injury, and neither James IV nor Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini travelled to the shrine to effect this kind of cure.

Quite strangely, despite the fact that its water had drained away and nothing remained to be seen, Our Lady's Well managed to find its way into at least two late 19th century tourist guides, most notably Coaching Tours, published by J. H. Lindsay in 1896, which dubbed it the "Holy Well of Miracles".

The site of Our Lady's Well has, historically, always been marked on Ordnance Survey maps (excepting those of today). The earliest OS map of the area, published in 1854, confidently marks the location of "Our Lady's Well (Closed)", but the surveyors for subsequent editions seem to have begun to doubt themselves, as the 1894 25-inch OS map (as pictured above) marks "Supposed Site of Our Lady's Well" at the same location. Although there is no other definitive record of the well's location, the site given by OS maps is logical, and, as those maps are rarely wrong, the well most probably was located in this approximate area.

It is worth noting that photographs on the internet of a pond near the church, purporting to be images of Our Lady's Well, simply cannot be the holy spring, as many late Victorian sources clearly state that the well had been drained and that nothing remains.