St Edward's Well, Corfe Castle

Dedication: Saint Edward the Martyr

Location: Corfe Castle

Status: lost

St Edward the Martyr, the son of King Edgar and his first wife Egelfleda, ascended to the English throne in 975. His reign, however, was short-lived, because he was assassinated at Corfe Castle in 978, reputedly on the orders of his step-mother, Elfrida, who apparently wished to enable her own son, Ethelred the Unready, to become king. As Ethelred was next in line to the throne, he automatically gained the throne upon Edward's death. According to tradition, Elfrida, who was then residing at Corfe with her son, took the opportunity to do away with Edward when he called in at Corfe Castle during a hunting expedition. Her servants are supposed to have apprehended him at the gate, where, after being offered a cup of wine, he was suddenly stabbed in the back. It is said that Edward immediately spurred his horse and rode away, but shortly fainted and died due to loss of blood. There are several variants of the legend regarding his initial burial: it is claimed that his body was first hidden in the house of a blind woman, who instantly regained her sight, before it was moved by Elfrida the next day, and either hidden in a nearby bog or, according to Francis Grose's Antiquities of England and Wales (1772), "thrown into a well".

Local tradition attests that Edward remained in either this "well" or swamp for a year, until a pillar of fire descending from heaven apparently revealed the location of his remains to some devout inhabitants of Wareham, who subsequently had his body buried in their parish church. His relics were later translated, upon the orders of Alfer, Earl of Mercia, to Shaftesbury, and his body was reputedly found to be completely incorrupt when his tomb was opened. It is interesting that it was believed as late as the 19th century that St Edward's Well sprung up from the spot where his body had been hidden by Elfrida, which suggests that the idea of his relics being concealed in a well must be a misinterpretation of the medieval tradition associated with the spring.

The earliest reference that I have found to the existence of St Edward's Well at Corfe appears in a document of 1429, in which "cursus aque apud Seint Edwardis-wateryng" was mentioned, meaning "watercourse at St Edward's Spring"; evidently, the site existed in medieval times. Strangely, however, I know of no further mentions of it until the 1820s, by which time the well had seemingly become known as "St Edward's Fountain". In 1820, a publication entitled A Walk Round Dorchester noted the existence of the spring, and claimed that "infirm people" were once "daily healed" by its waters; it also referred to the legend that it sprung up where Edward's "body had lain". In fact, it appears that the tradition of healing at the well survived into the late 19th century, with Charles Dickens' All the Year Round (1889) asserting that it was, "to this day", still "held in high estimation for the cure of weak eyes".

Apart from this legend and the fact that the spring was once used for healing purposes, very little is recorded about the site. It is not clear whether it would have been visited by medieval pilgrims, or whether it was simply used by those in the locality. Intriguingly, a piece published in The Archaeological Journal in 1865 identified a potential link between the spring and a deep well located within the castle itself:

Eastward of the Great Tower are the remains of the Great Hall... Adjoining the hall, at its north end, there seems to have been an apartment, which possibly may have been a small oratory, for a chapel, called the chapel of the Gloriette, certainly existed somewhere in this vicinity. Such chapels are not unfrequently met with attached to the great hall. Close to the end of the chapel was a well, which appears to have been sunk before the chapel was built, for it was partially within the line of the eastern wall, which was so constructed as to accommodate it. The well was probably dug at this spot with a view to reach the water which issues from a spring, called St. Edward's Fountain, at the base of the hill almost immediately below it.

Whilst there can be no certainty that this deep well was dug in an attempt to provide users of this chapel (assuming that it was one) access to St Edward's Well, it may well have been created for this very purpose. If nothing else, the information included in The Archaeological Journal is useful in helping to locate the spring, or the site of it: it is clear that the well was (or still is) located directly at the bottom of the castle mound. This is corroborated by Charles Dickens in All the Year Round, which described the site as being "situated at the foot of the Castle hill". Further information as to its whereabouts can be found in Swanage and its Immediate Neighbourhood, written by E. D. Burrowes in 1873, in which a footnote places St Edward's Well "a little south of the bridge towards Rempston". This bridge still exists, and is located at SY9602882438, just north east of the castle. The fact that the well was (or is) located south of this bridge places the spring on the eastern side of the castle mound. This is confirmed by the description of the site in The Archaeological Journal; in fact, the deep well in the possible chapel is marked on Ordnance Survey maps, at SY9595282311. As St Edward's Well is here described as being located "almost immediately below" this deep well at the "base of the hill", this also places the site on the eastern face of the mound.

Unfortunately, no Ordnance Survey maps mark a spring or any kind of water source at this location, so it can be assumed that surveyors simply did not see it when they visited the area. Whether it still exists today, however, is another matter: Ordnance Survey maps continue to show no springs in the area.

It is worth noting that there is absolutely no evidence to support modern claims that the spring was located within the castle walls, on the south west side of the enclosure.