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St Govor's Well, Kensington Gardens

Dedication: Saint Gofor

Location: Kensington Gardens

Coordinates: 51.5035N, -0.18441W

Grid reference: TQ261798

Heritage designation: none

St Gofor, a minor 6th century Welsh saint from Monmouthshire, never travelled to London, and his very localised medieval cult certainly did not have a presence in Kensington. In fact, St Govor's Well was built in 1856 by Sir Benjamin Hall, who, as the First Commissioner of Works, wanted to improve London's public parks, including Kensington Gardens. He was also the Baron of Llanover, and it appears to have been for this reason that Hall chose Gofor as the patron of his newly constructed drinking fountain. Although the inscription on the current drinking fountain claims that it was originally fed by a spring, the 1851 Ordnance Survey plan of London (which was incredibly detailed) shows absolutely nothing on its site, suggesting that Hall built it completely from scratch.

Soon after its construction, St Govor's Well quickly became a well-known feature of the park, and its waters gained such a good reputation that the Commission of Woods and Forests appointed an elderly lady to sit beside the spout, and sell the water to wayfarers in, according to a piece in the British Medical Journal published in November, 1886, "many coloured glasses". Quite interestingly, the drinking fountain also soon gained a reputation for possessing healing powers (particularly for "crippled limbs"), despite the fact that it was a completely new holy well and was nothing more than a folly. In the September of 1856, shortly after the site was built, the Punch magazine published a satirical poem about the well, mentioning the elderly lady, and making a mockery of both the water's supposed curative properties, and of Benjamin Hall himself:

'Mid the royal glades of Kensington, six green-clad keepers walk,
With the nursemaids in each alcove they indulge in pleasant talk,
But they watch the pranks of parish boys, with the temper and eyes of a hawk.

Last year the youngest flirt of the clan dissolved into skin and bone,
He measured seven five in his socks, but he barely scaled twelve stone,
He lost, as doctors would say, his
vis, and, as patients would say, his tone.

One summer morn, 'neath the chesnut [sic] shade as he pensively strolled about,
From a green hill-side he suddenly spied clear water-drops trickling out,
Which seemed to say, - "We're a tonic, my lad, just drink and we'll make you stout."

At its shrine for months, with a mug in his hand, he was wont on his knees to fall,
And the tonic iron-moulded his frame, till he grew as mighty as SAUL,
The secret waxed too big for his breast, so he told SIR BENJAMIN HALL.

That spirited Welshman covered the well, and made it a sacred spot,
And a veteran nymph presides with a glass, who declares she hasn't forgot,
When foxes were free in those Gardens to range, and livery servants were
not.

She details to the crowd this right ancient fact, but still there's a fact more quaint,
She "don't know who this ere GOVER is, that SIR BENJAMIN'S picked for a saint,"
"But she knows that, fill bottles without a pass from them 'Woods and Forests,' you mayn't."

Then success to the good St. Gover's Well, we no more shall at Bath be bled,
The hopes of each lodging-house keeper at Leamington Priors are fled,
And Cheltenham, Malvern, and Harrowgate
[sic] are as good as knocked on the head.

Only two years after the drinking fountain had been built, a Mr J. B. Barnes decided to produce an analysis of the water. He attested that the spring had been "discovered about three years ago by some workmen engaged in draining between the pond and the trees on the south side", although whether it really was fed by a spring is debatable. His analysis, which was published in The Pharmaceutical Journal in 1858/9, was not particularly damning, unlike later attempts at ascertaining the water's contents:

However, several years later, an analysis of five of London's "well known sources" of water, carried out in 1875 by a Mr Wanklyn, found that the water of St Govor's Well was less than pure. The Sanitary Record noted on the 30th of October, 1875, that the drinking fountain "scarcely deserves" its "special reputation", as it was found to be "loaded with organic matter", containing "above 0.10 of albuminoid ammonia". On the 1st of November, 1875, a local newspaper reported that the "inhabitants of the old Court suburb have been rather shocked this week" at the results of the analysis, and that the well would probably "be closed". Nonetheless, people continued to drink the water, in the hope of improving their health, and W. Caret Hazlitt, in a piece in the Antiquary, published in 1886, entitled Notes on our Popular Antiquities, related that the fountain was "still visited by persons who have faith in the virtues of the water". However, the British Medical Journal, in 1886, detailed an event that indicated that St Govor's Well was perhaps not fed by a spring at all:

During the past summer, while the Round Pond has been drained St. Govor's Well has run dry, and it is said that some pipes were discovered under the two or three feet of stinking mud at the bottom of the pond which had the appearance of communicating directly with the well, so that it seems probable that the water has been filtered through the mud, and not through the intervening bed of gravel. Can its reputed medicinal virtues be due to the organic impurities of stagnant water? It is hoped that the source of the water will be fully investigated, and, if it is found to be the mere drainage of the pond, that the well will be closed, or else that a supply of pure water will be laid on from a known source. The well would be very much missed by the children, as there is no other drinking-fountain in the gardens.

This discovery seems to have caused a rapid decline in the drinking fountain's popularity, and The Lancet reported in February, 1897, that "the saint has deserted the shrine", and "the water, it is to be feared, has lost its healing efficacy". The Victorian drinking fountain itself remained unchanged until very recently, when it was replaced with the unusual circular structure that exists today. The original fountain built by Sir Benjamin Hall consisted of a leaden spout, in a small sunken enclosure, reached by several stone steps. "St Govor's Well, 1856" was reputedly inscribed on the structure. It was surrounded by iron railings, and waste water issued into a stone basin beneath the spout. Perhaps the only alteration that was ever made to the structure before it was demolished was the installment of a metal cup, for the use of nursery maids and children, which appeared at the fountain after the elderly lady resigned from her post. Luckily, a considerable number of illustrations, and even one rare photograph, of the Victorian structure exist:

The 1867 large scale Ordnance Survey map of London, which depicts both the steps and the stone overflow basin
An illustration that appeared in Miss Thackeray's Old Kensington, in 1873
A drawing published in Kensington Picturesque and Historical, by William John Loftie (1888), depicting the spout; the metal cup on a chain is visible
A second drawing that appeared in Kensington Picturesque and Historical, showing the fountain from a distance
A photograph, taken in 1910, that was included in Springs, Streams, and Spas of London, by Alfred Stanley Ford

When I visited the site in the May of 2025, the current drinking fountain was working (presumably the water is now taken from a cleaner source) and it appeared to be in good condition.

Access:

Kensington Gardens are open to the public daily, free of charge.

Images:

Old OS maps are reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

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